Does the Pricing of Financial Reporting Quality Change Around Dividend Changes?

48 Pages Posted: 16 Apr 2005

See all articles by Shuping Chen

Shuping Chen

University of Texas at Austin - Red McCombs School of Business

Terry J. Shevlin

University of California-Irvine; University of California-Irvine

Yen H. Tong

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) - Nanyang Business School

Date Written: August 29, 2005

Abstract

We examine whether accrual earnings quality is a priced information risk factor in a dividend change setting. We define information risk as the probability that firm-specific financial statement information pertinent to investor pricing decisions is of low precision, and use the factor-mimicking portfolio returns formed on the Dechow-Dichev (2002) AQ metric to proxy for the Information Risk (IR) factor returns. We augment the Fama-French three-factor model with this IR factor, and find that dividend initiation and increase firms exhibit a decrease in the factor loadings on the IR factor while dividend decrease firms exhibit an increase in the corresponding factor loadings, and such changes in the factor loadings occur months prior to the dividend change announcements. Further analysis indicates that dividend initiation and increase (decrease) firms experience a corresponding improvement (decrease) in the precision of earnings information (proxied by changes in the AQ metric) and a reduction (an increase) in analyst forecast dispersion and stock return volatility in the years surrounding the structural break on the IR factor loadings. Overall, our results are consistent with investors treating the information risk associated with the precision of financial statement information as a priced risk factor, with both the precision and pricing changing in predictable directions around dividend changes.

Keywords: Dividends, information risk, accruals quality, systematic risk

JEL Classification: G12, G35, M41

Suggested Citation

Chen, Shuping and Shevlin, Terry J. and Shevlin, Terry J. and Tong, Yen H., Does the Pricing of Financial Reporting Quality Change Around Dividend Changes? (August 29, 2005). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=688596 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.688596

Shuping Chen

University of Texas at Austin - Red McCombs School of Business ( email )

Austin, TX 78712
United States
521.471.5328 (Phone)

Terry J. Shevlin (Contact Author)

University of California-Irvine ( email )

Paul Merage School of Business
Irvine, CA 92697-3125
United States
949-824-6149 (Phone)

University of California-Irvine ( email )

Paul Merage School of Business
Irvine, CA California 92697-3125
United States
2065509891 (Phone)

Yen H. Tong

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) - Nanyang Business School ( email )

Singapore 639798
Singapore
65-6790-5743 (Phone)

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
755
Abstract Views
4,358
Rank
61,800
PlumX Metrics