Revaluing assets is a violation of CSR if the accompanying credit is taken directly to
equity. Yet asset revaluations bring book value nearer to market value. Immediate write-off
of goodwill violates CSR and usually moves book values farther from market values. In
summary, both recognizing goodwill (consistent with CSR) and revaluing assets (violating
CSR) bring book value nearer to market value. Hence, developing predictions on the
effects of specific accounting treatments on value relevance is not always clear.
Conservative accounting (bias) is expected to generally reduce the value relevance of
both book value and earnings since the essence of conservatism is delay in reflecting
certain events in the accounting records.
Recording goodwill is common practice in Indonesia and the Philippines, and
uncommon but allowed in Malaysia and Thailand. Korea and Taiwan do not allow
goodwill to be recorded. Asset revaluations are common in all countries except Indonesia
and Taiwan where they are allowed but restricted in practice. Table 2 presents a summary
of our analysis of these accounting practices.
Asset revaluation and goodwill are both recorded only in the Philippines, and neither is
recorded in Taiwan. The other four countries allow one procedure or the other but not
both. We expect the incremental explanatory power of book value to be high in the
Philippines and low in Taiwan relative to the other five countries. However, the effect of
these accounting practices on the incremental explanatory power of book value for the
other countries is ambiguous.
The six countries also differ in other accounting practices, including capitalizing leases,
capitalizing research development costs, and applying the equity method to affiliated
firms. Firms that capitalize and use the equity method are likely to have book values that
are closer to market values than firms that do not.2 Table 3 presents a summary of our
analysis of these accounting practices.
Only Indonesia and Malaysia allow or require all three accounting procedures. The
effect of these accounting differences on incremental explanatory power is ambiguous for
the other countries. However, we expect the explanatory power of book value in Indonesia
and Malaysia to be higher than in Thailand and Taiwan.