SAMPLE AND STUDY DESIGN
Our sample covers publicly traded firms in Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Taiwan, and Thailand across the period from 1987 to 1996. The stock prices and
accounting data for this study are from the Worldscope Global Researcher. The sample
selection criteria are:
1. Accounting data is from consolidated financial statements.
2. Financial firms are excluded (insurance, banks, and other miscellaneous financial
firms). Accounting practices for these firms are so distinct that their valuation
parameters are likely to be substantially different from those for industrial firms.
3. Firms with negative book values are deleted. These firms are likely to be in
financial distress and may be interesting in their own right. However, the focus of
this study is the across country differences in value relevance of accounting
numbers derived under different accounting practices. Hence, restricting our
sample to firms with positive book values will allow us to focus on firms where
differences are mostly likely to reflect accounting differences.
4. Twelve firms with EPS greater than their BVPS are deleted since data on those firms
is likely to contain errors. These firms constituted less than 1 percent of the sample.
5. Twenty firm-years with excessive statistical influence in our regressions were
deleted. The firm-years showed undue influence by the diagnostics and cutoff rules
described in Belsley et al. (1980).