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Essays on capital markets

University of British Columbia

This thesis is a collection of three essays on capital markets. The first essay examines how signals of reputation with non-equity stakeholders affect the market reaction to accounting restatements. Using Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rating as a proxy for reputation with non-equity stakeholders, I find significantly less negative market reaction to restatements for firms with better reputation. I also find that high-CSR firms experience smaller earnings-decreases and need to engage in fewer reputation restoration activities. The results suggest that a significant portion of the market value loss triggered by restatements reflects an expectation that the restating firms will face a ‘worsening of terms’ in their future transactions with the non-equity stakeholders, and CSR reputation can dampen this effect. The second essay examines the impact of accounting restatements on the information content of analyst forecast revisions (FRIC). I find that following material restatements that are perceived to be intentional, FRIC increases significantly compared to the pre-restatement period level. The results suggest that investors increase their reliance on analysts when there is uncertainty about the firm and the credibility of management disclosure is compromised. Additional tests reveal that the effect is greater for analysts who are less likely to have close ties with the management. The third essay studies how misaligned language between the investor and the firm contributes to the foreign investor bias. In particular, we document a significant US institutional investor bias against firms located in Quebec relative to firms located in the Rest of Canada (ROC). The differential bias is surprising given that Quebec and the ROC share the same country, federal law, stock exchange, accounting standards, and regulatory filings are prepared in both English and French; and given that US institutional investors are sophisticated investors at close geographic proximity to both Quebec and the ROC. We also contrast the bias against Quebec firms with different levels of French versus English online presence, and we contrast the bias of institutional investors located in the UK versus France, to bolster our conclusion that incongruent languages are a major source of bias.

Text

2016-09-02

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/59049

Business Administration - Accounting

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/