Sensitivity to the Timing of Price
We examined the sensitivity of our results to the date at which the stock price is
taken. At the end of the fiscal year, information in the financial reports including
book values and earnings are not available to investors. Use of lagged stock prices
would allow for that financial statement information to be impounded into price. On
the other hand, later prices will include information concerning events subsequent to
the fiscal year thereby confounding the relation between accounting and firm value.
To test the sensitivity of the price date, we run the regressions for lags of 0 to 5
months. Table 12 reports the total and incremental explanatory power for BVPS and
for REPS for these six price dates.10 Only Indonesia and Korea show higher R2s for
prices lagged after fiscal year-end. Total explanatory power for Indonesian (Korean)
firms is greatest when prices are measured 4 (2) months after the fiscal year-end. The
differences in R2 are not large, and the higher R2s do not affect the ordering of
countries in Tables 9±11.