IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/abacus/v56y2020i3p436-453.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Fair Value Adjustments on Dividend Policy Under Mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards Adoption: Australian Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaomeng Chen
  • Andreas Hellmann
  • Safdar R. Mithani

Abstract

Using a sample of firms from the financial sector of the Australian Securities Exchange, we examine the effect of the fair value adjustments of financial instruments on firms’ dividend distributions in the context of mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption. We find a positive relationship between the fair value adjustments of financial instruments and firms’ dividend payouts, suggesting that the frequent use of fair value adjustments of financial instruments by financial firms following mandatory IFRS adoption has the potential to increase the proportion of transitory earnings in reported earnings and cause changes in dividend policies. Our results add to the ongoing debate on the unintended economic consequences of fair value accounting (FVA) and provide empirical support for regulators’ concerns that unrealized FVA gains from asset revaluation during booms may encourage the distribution of those unrealized gains.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaomeng Chen & Andreas Hellmann & Safdar R. Mithani, 2020. "The Effect of Fair Value Adjustments on Dividend Policy Under Mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards Adoption: Australian Evidence," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 56(3), pages 436-453, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:56:y:2020:i:3:p:436-453
    DOI: 10.1111/abac.12180
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/abac.12180
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/abac.12180?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William P. Rees, 1997. "The Impact of Dividends, Debt and Investment on Valuation Models," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(7‐8), pages 1111-1140, September.
    2. Martina K. Linnenluecke & Jacqueline Birt & Xiaoyan Chen & Xin Ling & Tom Smith, 2017. "Accounting Research in Abacus, A&F, AAR, and AJM from 2008–2015: A Review and Research Agenda," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 53(2), pages 159-179, June.
    3. Skinner, Douglas J., 2008. "The evolving relation between earnings, dividends, and stock repurchases," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 582-609, March.
    4. Malcolm Baker & Brock Mendel & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2016. "Dividends as Reference Points: A Behavioral Signaling Approach," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 697-738.
    5. Ryan, Stephen G., 2012. "Financial Reporting for Financial Instruments," Foundations and Trends(R) in Accounting, now publishers, vol. 6(3–4), pages 187-354, December.
    6. Beatty, Anne & Liao, Scott, 2014. "Financial accounting in the banking industry: A review of the empirical literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 339-383.
    7. Jagannathan, Murali & Stephens, Clifford P. & Weisbach, Michael S., 2000. "Financial flexibility and the choice between dividends and stock repurchases," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 355-384, September.
    8. Goergen, Marc & Renneboog, Luc & Correia da Silva, Luis, 2005. "When do German firms change their dividends?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-2), pages 375-399, March.
    9. Mary Barth, 2006. "Including estimates of the future in today's financial statements," BIS Working Papers 208, Bank for International Settlements.
    10. Igor Goncharov & Sander van Triest, 2011. "Do fair value adjustments influence dividend policy?," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(1), pages 51-68, March.
    11. Ulf Br&?ggemann & J?rg-Markus Hitz & Thorsten Sellhorn, 2013. "Intended and Unintended Consequences of Mandatory IFRS Adoption: A Review of Extant Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 1-37, May.
    12. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda & Skinner, Douglas J, 1992. "Dividends and Losses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1837-1863, December.
    13. Floyd, Eric & Li, Nan & Skinner, Douglas J., 2015. "Payout policy through the financial crisis: The growth of repurchases and the resilience of dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 299-316.
    14. Brav, Alon & Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Michaely, Roni, 2005. "Payout policy in the 21st century," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 483-527, September.
    15. Pattenden, Kerry & Twite, Garry, 2008. "Taxes and dividend policy under alternative tax regimes," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 1-16, February.
    16. Cornett, Marcia Millon & Rezaee, Zabihollah & Tehranian, Hassan, 1996. "An investigation of capital market reactions to pronouncements on fair value accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1-3), pages 119-154, October.
    17. Robert Boyer, 2007. "Assessing the impact of fair value upon financial crises," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-00812978, HAL.
    18. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    19. Easterbrook, Frank H, 1984. "Two Agency-Cost Explanations of Dividends," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 650-659, September.
    20. Wayne Landsman, 2007. "Is fair value accounting information relevant and reliable? Evidence from capital market research," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(S1), pages 19-30.
    21. Robert Boyer, 2007. "Assessing the impact of fair value upon financial crises," Post-Print hal-00812978, HAL.
    22. Michael J. Barclay & Clifford W. Smith & Ross L. Watts, 1995. "The Determinants Of Corporate Leverage And Dividend Policies," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 7(4), pages 4-19, January.
    23. Stephen Penman, 2007. "Financial reporting quality: is fair value a plus or a minus?," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(S1), pages 33-44.
    24. Caruana, J. & Pazarbasioglu, C., 2008. "Revisiting valuation practices throughout the business cycle: some symmetry is needed," Financial Stability Review, Banque de France, issue 12, pages 15-22, October.
    25. William P. Rees, 1997. "The Impact of Dividends, Debt and Investment on Valuation Models," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(7&8), pages 1111-1140.
    26. Jorge Farinha, 2003. "Dividend Policy, Corporate Governance and the Managerial Entrenchment Hypothesis: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(9-10), pages 1173-1209.
    27. Sudipto Bhattacharya, 1979. "Imperfect Information, Dividend Policy, and "The Bird in the Hand" Fallacy," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 259-270, Spring.
    28. Nicky J. Welton & Howard H. Z. Thom, 2015. "Value of Information," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 35(5), pages 564-566, July.
    29. Steven Cahan & Ester Chen & Ilanit Gavious & Steven Cahan, 2016. "Unrealized earnings, dividends and reporting aggressiveness: an examination of firms’ behavior in the era of fair value accounting," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 56(1), pages 217-250, March.
    30. Igor Goncharov & Sander Triest, 2014. "Unintended Consequences of Changing Accounting Standards: The Case of Fair Value Accounting and Mandatory Dividends," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 50(3), pages 341-367, September.
    31. Anne Beatty, 2007. "How does changing measurement change management behaviour? A review of the evidence," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(S1), pages 63-71.
    32. Jorge Farinha, 2003. "Dividend Policy, Corporate Governance and the Managerial Entrenchment Hypothesis: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(9‐10), pages 1173-1209, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wessel M Badenhorst & Rieka von Well, 2023. "The Value‐relevance of Fair Value Measurement for Inventories," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 33(2), pages 135-159, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hussein Abedi Shamsabadi & Byung-Seong Min & Richard Chung, 2016. "Corporate governance and dividend strategy: lessons from Australia," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 12(5), pages 583-610, October.
    2. Paul McGuinness & Kevin Lam & João Vieito, 2015. "Gender and other major board characteristics in China: Explaining corporate dividend policy and governance," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 989-1038, December.
    3. James, Hui & Benson, Bradley W. & Wu, Chen (Ken), 2017. "Does CEO ownership affect payout policy? Evidence from using CEO scaled wealth-performance sensitivity," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 328-345.
    4. Andres, Christian & Hofbaur, Ulrich, 2017. "Do what you did four quarters ago: Trends and implications of quarterly dividends," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 139-158.
    5. Paul Tanyi & David B. Smith & Xiaoyan Cheng, 2021. "Does firm payout policy affect shareholders’ dissatisfaction with directors?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 279-320, July.
    6. Alpa Dhanani, 2005. "Corporate Dividend Policy: The Views of British Financial Managers," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(7‐8), pages 1625-1672, September.
    7. Adra, Samer & Gao, Yang & Huang, Jin & Yuan, Jiayi, 2023. "Geopolitical risk and corporate payout policy," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    8. Brawn, Derek A. & Šević, Aleksandar, 2018. "“Firm size matters: Industry sector, firm age and volatility do too in determining which publicly-listed US firms pay a dividend”," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 132-152.
    9. Hui Liang James & Hongxia Wang, 2021. "Independent director tenure and dividends," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5-6), pages 1057-1091, May.
    10. Jie He & Xuan Tian & Huan Yang & Luo Zuo, 2020. "Asymmetric Cost Behavior and Dividend Policy," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 989-1021, September.
    11. Roni Michaely & Stefano Rossi & Michael Weber & Michael Weber, 2017. "The Information Content of Dividends: Safer Profits, Not Higher Profits," CESifo Working Paper Series 6751, CESifo.
    12. Andres, Christian & Doumet, Markus & Fernau, Erik & Theissen, Erik, 2015. "The Lintner model revisited: Dividends versus total payouts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 56-69.
    13. Szomko Natalia, 2015. "Investor Reaction to Information on Final Dividend Payouts on the Warsaw Stock Exchange – an Event Study Analysis," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 45(1), pages 127-146, March.
    14. Grey, Colette & Flynn, Antoinette & Donnelly, Ray, 2020. "Management compensation contracts and distribution policies in the US technology sector," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    15. Hwang Hee Lee & Frederick Dongchuhl Oh, 2022. "The role of credit default swaps in determining corporate payout policy," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 635-661, June.
    16. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Trojanowski, G., 2005. "Patterns in Payout Policy and Payout Channel Choice of UK Firms in the 1990s," Discussion Paper 2005-002, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    17. Maria Elisabete Duante Neves, 2017. "Payout and Firm's Catering," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(4), pages 104-132.
    18. Sun, Liang & Yu, Huaibing, 2022. "The effects of busy board on firm’s probability to pay dividends," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    19. Szládek, Dániel, 2024. "Osztalékfizetés helyett részvény-visszavásárlás?. A részvény-visszavásárlások népszerűségének lehetséges okai [Share repurchases instead of dividend payments?. The evolution of payout policies and ," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 154-175.
    20. Booth, Laurence & Zhou, Jun, 2017. "Dividend policy: A selective review of results from around the world," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 1-15.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:56:y:2020:i:3:p:436-453. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0001-3072 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.