As explained in the previous section, conservatism is expected to reduce the value
relevance of both book value and residual earnings. In addition, we can make some
predictions about the effects of clean surplus accounting for goodwill and asset revaluations
on the value relevance of book value. However, the effects of these accounting
practices on the value relevance of residual earnings are less clear.
The Philippines is the most faithful to clean surplus accounting as both goodwill
and asset revaluations are amortized to income over their useful lives. The other countries (1) do not record goodwill (Korea and Taiwan), (2) do not record asset
revaluations (Indonesia and Taiwan), (3) immediately write-off goodwill to equity
(Malaysia and Thailand), or (4) amortize asset revaluation increments to equity (Korea,
Malaysia, and Thailand). Korea and Taiwan are least faithful to clean surplus
accounting. Korea does not capitalize goodwill and asset revaluations are amortized
to equity according to schedules mandated by tax law. Taiwan does not capitalize
goodwill nor allow asset revaluations. Korea is also the only country that does not use
the equity method for affiliated companies; therefore the earnings of Korean firms do
not include the earnings of affiliated firms. We expect the relative explanatory power
of residual earnings to be high in the Philippines and low in Korea and Taiwan. The
effect on the explanatory power of residual earnings for the other countries is
ambiguous. Table 4 presents a summary of the amortization practices