Differences in accounting practices across countries are a major concern to investors,
accounting standard setters, stock exchanges, and financial analysts. The International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) and the International Organization of Securities
Commissions (IOSCO) have devoted considerable effort to standardization or harmonization
of accounting practices across countries. Investment professionals claim that accounting
differences may impede international capital flows (Choi and Levich, 1991). This
study examines the relation between accounting numbers and firm market values in six
Asian countries with diverse accounting practices: Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. We focus on the incremental and relative explanatory
power of book value and residual earnings. Because accounting systems differ across the
six countries, we examine whether those differences are related to the valuation usefulness
of accounting measures. Our objective is to provide evidence on the value relevance of
accounting numbers from different accounting systems. Such evidence should inform the
current debate over international accounting standards and practices.
Our analysis follows a model developed by Preinreich (1938), Edwards and Bell (1961),
and Peasnell (1982) and formalized by Ohlson (1991, 1995) and Feltham and Ohlson
(1995) sometimes termed the Residual Earnings (Income) model. The model formally
states a simple concept: firm value is a function of book value and future residual earnings.
A key aspect of the model is that its valuation accuracy does not depend on a particular set
of ``good'' accounting procedures. The only requirement on accounting procedures is clean
surplus accounting, that is, book value of equity changes only with income or loss and net
capital investments and withdrawals (dividends) by owners. In addition, empirical
applications of the model to finite horizons are potentially affected by bias in the
accounting system. Therefore, comparisons across countries with different accounting
practices are one way to investigate the value relevance of different accounting practices.
Across the six countries, accounting systems vary in their faithfulness to clean surplus
accounting and in the extent to which they exhibit bias (conservatism). Hence, it is
possible that accounting values from some of the countries may provide better estimates of
firm value than accounting values from the other countries. Therefore, the usefulness of
accounting for firm valuation may differ across countries as well. On the other hand, the
accounting standards developed in these countries may be partly based on International
Accounting Standards (IAS) or US GAAP. This would tend to make accounting
procedures and their value relevance similar. Saudagaran and Diga (1997) report that of
our six countries, only Korea has not adopted some or all of IAS.
We investigate the value relevance of different accounting practices using an
empirical model that regresses current book value and current residual earnings on
market prices. In contrast, the residual income model is based on expected residual
earnings. Considerable prior research, as discussed in the next section, examines the
contemporaneous relation between accounting and market values. In this study, we
examine that relation for six Asian countries. However, our interest is in the relation
between accounting practices and the value relevance of accounting numbers. We
focus on differences in accounting procedures across the six countries that affect book
value and residual earnings.1 The accounting procedures selected: accounting for
goodwill, asset revaluations, leases, research and development (R&D) expenditures,
and the equity method of accounting for affiliated companies each may be categorized
in terms of faithfulness to clean surplus and extent of conservatism.
We address the implications of these accounting procedures for the value relevance of
accounting information. Philippine firms, for example, record goodwill and revalue assets, but firms in Taiwan do neither. This means that book values in the Philippines will reflect
market values of assets more closely than in Taiwan. Therefore, we expect the explanatory
power of book value will be greater for Philippine firms than for Taiwanese firms. As
another example, only Indonesian and Malaysian firms capitalize leases and R&D
expenditures and use the equity method for affiliated companies. These are less
conservative accounting practices than alternatives used in other counties.
We find accounting in Korea and Taiwan to be least faithful to clean surplus
accounting. Korea does not capitalize goodwill and asset revaluations are amortized to
equity according to tax law. Taiwan does not capitalize goodwill nor allow asset
revaluations. Korea is also the only country not to use the equity method for affiliated
companies. Thus, the earnings of Korean firms do not include the earnings of affiliated
firms. Philippine firms, however, amortize both goodwill and asset revaluations to income.
Recall that violations of clean surplus accounting occur when income does not reflect
changes in equity value. Thus, violations of clean surplus bias empirical calculations of
residual earnings. Therefore, we expect the explanatory power of residual earnings will be
highest for Philippine firms and least for Korean and Taiwan firms.
Overall, our results show significant differences across countries in the value relevance
of accounting earnings and book values. Explanatory power over all firm-years ranges
from R2 = .17 in Taiwan to R2 = .68 for Korea. The incremental explanatory power of book
value per share (BVPS) and residual earnings per share (REPS) is similarly diverse.
Incremental explanatory power of BVPS over all firm-years ranges from 7.2 percent
(Taiwan) to 65.3 percent (Philippines). For REPS, the incremental explanatory power over
all firm-years ranges from 1.4 percent (Korea) to 13.2 percent (Thailand).
Generally, we find differences in accounting appear to be related to differences in value
relevance. We find that the explanatory power of book value is highest in the Philippines
and lowest in Taiwan. This is consistent with our expectations based on the accounting
differences in the two countries. Indonesia and Malaysia have accounting systems that are
less conservative than other countries. However, we find the incremental explanatory
power of book value does not stand out as high in Indonesia or in Malaysia. This result is
only partly consistent with our expectations. We also expected that the relative explanatory
power of residual earnings would be high in the Philippines and low in Korea and Taiwan,
and the results support this prediction. Our comparisons across countries should be viewed
with caution because the number of years of data available ranges from only 2 years for the
Philippines to 10 years for Malaysia.
The next section of the article briefly reviews related research and this is followed by
the section discussing accounting differences in the six Asian countries. This is followed
by the description of the sample and development the study design. The section presenting
the analysis of our data and reporting the results of our tests follows. A final section
summarizes our findings.