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.