IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/reaccs/v24y2019i4d10.1007_s11142-019-09512-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do financial analysts compel firms to make accounting decisions? Evidence from goodwill impairments

Author

Listed:
  • Douglas R. Ayres

    (Butler University)

  • John L. Campbell

    (University of Georgia)

  • James A. Chyz

    (University of Tennessee)

  • Jonathan E. Shipman

    (University of Arkansas)

Abstract

This paper examines whether financial analysts’ presence compels recognition of goodwill impairments. Analysts could impact managers’ impairment decisions in at least two ways: (1) by improving the information environment through their analysis of firm performance (i.e., ex ante monitoring) and (2) by increasing the likelihood the manager and firm experience negative consequences when they fail to record a necessary impairment (i.e., ex post monitoring). We find that the likelihood of an impairment is more strongly related to an expected impairment when analyst coverage is higher. Consistent with both forms of monitoring, we also find that analyst downgrades before the firm’s reporting date increase the probability that management records an expected impairment at the reporting date and that failing to record an expected impairment is associated with decreases in analyst following and a lower likelihood that managers are employed at the end of the following year.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglas R. Ayres & John L. Campbell & James A. Chyz & Jonathan E. Shipman, 2019. "Do financial analysts compel firms to make accounting decisions? Evidence from goodwill impairments," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 1214-1251, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:reaccs:v:24:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11142-019-09512-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11142-019-09512-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11142-019-09512-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11142-019-09512-0?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harrison Hong & Terence Lim & Jeremy C. Stein, 2000. "Bad News Travels Slowly: Size, Analyst Coverage, and the Profitability of Momentum Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 265-295, February.
    2. François Derrien & Ambrus Kecskés, 2013. "The Real Effects of Financial Shocks: Evidence from Exogenous Changes in Analyst Coverage," Post-Print hal-00852356, HAL.
    3. Karl B. Diether & Christopher J. Malloy & Anna Scherbina, 2002. "Differences of Opinion and the Cross Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 2113-2141, October.
    4. Jayne M. Godfrey & Ping‐Sheng Koh, 2009. "Goodwill impairment as a reflection of investment opportunities," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 49(1), pages 117-140, March.
    5. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1997. "Industry costs of equity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 153-193, February.
    6. Bebchuk, Lucian A. & Cremers, K.J. Martijn & Peyer, Urs C., 2011. "The CEO pay slice," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 199-221, October.
    7. Edward C. Norton & Hua Wang & Chunrong Ai, 2004. "Computing interaction effects and standard errors in logit and probit models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 4(2), pages 154-167, June.
    8. Cao, Charles & Yu, Fan & Zhong, Zhaodong, 2010. "The information content of option-implied volatility for credit default swap valuation," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 321-343, August.
    9. Suijs, J.P.M., 2007. "Voluntary disclosure of information when firms are uncertain of investor response," Other publications TiSEM dc14208d-199b-4700-9795-5, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Alexander Dyck & Adair Morse & Luigi Zingales, 2010. "Who Blows the Whistle on Corporate Fraud?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(6), pages 2213-2253, December.
    11. He, Jie (Jack) & Tian, Xuan, 2013. "The dark side of analyst coverage: The case of innovation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 856-878.
    12. Irani, Rustom M. & Oesch, David, 2013. "Monitoring and corporate disclosure: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 398-418.
    13. Robert M. Bowen & Xia Chen & Qiang Cheng, 2008. "Analyst Coverage and the Cost of Raising Equity Capital: Evidence from Underpricing of Seasoned Equity Offerings," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(3), pages 657-700, September.
    14. Anne Beatty & Joseph Weber, 2006. "Accounting Discretion in Fair Value Estimates: An Examination of SFAS 142 Goodwill Impairments," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 257-288, May.
    15. Harrison Hong & Marcin Kacperczyk, 2010. "Competition and Bias," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1683-1725.
    16. Chen, Tao & Harford, Jarrad & Lin, Chen, 2015. "Do analysts matter for governance? Evidence from natural experiments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 383-410.
    17. Eli Amir & Baruch Lev & Theodore Sougiannis, 2003. "Do financial analysts get intangibles?," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(4), pages 635-659.
    18. Lawrence, Alastair & Sloan, Richard & Sun, Yuan, 2013. "Non-discretionary conservatism: Evidence and implications," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 112-133.
    19. Mark T. Bradshaw & Richard G. Sloan, 2002. "GAAP versus The Street: An Empirical Assessment of Two Alternative Definitions of Earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 41-66, March.
    20. François Derrien & Ambrus Kecskés, 2013. "The Real Effects of Financial Shocks: Evidence from Exogenous Changes in Analyst Coverage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(4), pages 1407-1440, August.
    21. Kevin K. Li & Richard G. Sloan, 2017. "Has goodwill accounting gone bad?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 964-1003, June.
    22. Churyk, Natalie Tatiana, 2005. "Reporting goodwill: are the new accounting standards consistent with market valuations?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(10), pages 1353-1361, October.
    23. Chung, Kee H. & Jo, Hoje, 1996. "The Impact of Security Analysts' Monitoring and Marketing Functions on the Market Value of Firms," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 493-512, December.
    24. Brennan, Michael J. & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 1995. "Investment analysis and price formation in securities markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 361-381, July.
    25. Henry Jarva, 2009. "Do Firms Manage Fair Value Estimates? An Examination of SFAS 142 Goodwill Impairments," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(9-10), pages 1059-1086.
    26. Gurley–Calvez, Tami & Bruce, Donald, 2008. "Do Tax Cuts Promote Entrepreneurial Longevity?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 61(2), pages 225-250, June.
    27. Yu, Fang (Frank), 2008. "Analyst coverage and earnings management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 245-271, May.
    28. Suijs, Jeroen, 2007. "Voluntary disclosure of information when firms are uncertain of investor response," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2-3), pages 391-410, July.
    29. Henry Jarva, 2009. "Do Firms Manage Fair Value Estimates? An Examination of SFAS 142 Goodwill Impairments," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(9‐10), pages 1059-1086, November.
    30. Brennan, Michael J & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Swaminathan, Bhaskaran, 1993. "Investment Analysis and the Adjustment of Stock Prices to Common Information," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(4), pages 799-824.
    31. Yezegel, Ari, 2015. "Why do analysts revise their stock recommendations after earnings announcements?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 163-181.
    32. Healy, Paul M. & Palepu, Krishna G., 2001. "Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 405-440, September.
    33. Edward Xuejun Li & K. Ramesh & Min Shen & Joanna Shuang Wu, 2015. "Do Analyst Stock Recommendations Piggyback on Recent Corporate News? An Analysis of Regular‐Hour and After‐Hours Revisions," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 821-861, September.
    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. Zhongwei Huang & Thomas Jeanjean & Daphne Lui, 2023. "Analyst independence and earnings management," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3-4), pages 598-621, March.
    2. Yu Chen & Xiaoyan Chu & Jung Chul Park & Jared S. Soileau, 2022. "CEO religious university affiliation and financial reporting quality," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(1), pages 417-468, March.
    3. Xu, Jingjing & Huang, Haijie & Lee, Edward & Petaibanlue, Jirada, 2023. "Does goodwill pressure drive business restructuring based on subsidiary disposal?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    4. Andrei Filip & Gerald J. Lobo & Luc Paugam, 2021. "Managerial discretion to delay the recognition of goodwill impairment: The role of enforcement," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1-2), pages 36-69, January.
    5. Alshehabi, Ahmad & Georgiou, George & Ala, Alessandro S., 2021. "Country-specific drivers of the value relevance of goodwill impairment losses," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    6. Huang, Qiongyu & Zhang, Ruiyao & Li, Siyao & Li, Jingjing & Yao, Qiong, 2024. "The role of financial advisorʼs industry expertise in M&A quality: Evidence from goodwill impairment," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PB), pages 216-231.
    7. Killins, Robert & Ngo, Thanh & Wang, Hongxia, 2021. "Goodwill impairment and CEO overconfidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    8. Hahn, Sebastian, 2021. "The Role of Large Institutional Ownership on Goodwill Impairment under the SFAS 142 Regime," Junior Management Science (JUMS), Junior Management Science e. V., vol. 6(2), pages 408-423.

    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. Hongwen Han & Jiali Jenna Tang & Qingquan Tang, 2021. "Goodwill Impairment, Securities Analysts, and Information Transparency," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 767-799, August.
    2. Li, Donghui & Chen, Zhian & An, Zhe & Murong, Michael, 2017. "Do financial analysts play a role in shaping the rival response of target firms? International evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 84-103.
    3. Adhikari, Binay K., 2016. "Causal effect of analyst following on corporate social responsibility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 201-216.
    4. Akyol, Ali C. & Qian, Yiming & Yu, Frank, 2023. "How do experienced analysts improve price efficiency?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    5. To, Thomas Y. & Navone, Marco & Wu, Eliza, 2018. "Analyst coverage and the quality of corporate investment decisions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 164-181.
    6. Jagjeev Dosanjh, 2017. "Exchange Initiatives and Market Efficiency: Evidence from the Australian Securities Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2017, January-A.
    7. Altınkılıç, Oya & Balashov, Vadim S. & Hansen, Robert S., 2019. "Investment bank monitoring and bonding of security analysts’ research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 98-119.
    8. repec:uts:finphd:34 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Chan, Konan & Guo, Re-Jin J. & Wang, Yanzhi A. & Yang, Hsiao-Lin, 2022. "Organization capital and analyst coverage," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 81-105.
    10. Galanti, Sébastien & Leroy, Aurélien & Vaubourg, Anne-Gaël, 2022. "Investment and access to external finance in Europe: Does analyst coverage matter?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    11. Xie, Lingmin & Chen, Zhian & Li, Donghui & Tan, Hongping, 2022. "Foreign analysts and managerial investment learning from stock markets," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    12. Marco Navone & Thomas To, 2020. "Corporate watchdogs," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 49(4), pages 925-947, December.
    13. Zhang, Ping & Wang, Yiru, 2023. "The bright side of analyst coverage on corporate innovation: Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    14. Chen, Tao & Harford, Jarrad & Lin, Chen, 2015. "Do analysts matter for governance? Evidence from natural experiments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 383-410.
    15. Hansen, Robert S., 2015. "What is the value of sell-side analysts? Evidence from coverage changes – A discussion," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 58-64.
    16. Nguyen, Lan Thi Mai & Cheong, Chee Seng & Zurbruegg, Ralf, 2021. "Brokerage M&As and the peer effect on analyst forecast accuracy," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    17. Chen, Tao & Xie, Lingmin & Zhang, Yuanyuan, 2017. "How does analysts' forecast quality relate to corporate investment efficiency?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 217-240.
    18. Bradley, Daniel & Gokkaya, Sinan & Liu, Xi & Xie, Fei, 2017. "Are all analysts created equal? Industry expertise and monitoring effectiveness of financial analysts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 179-206.
    19. Sualihu, Mohammed Aminu & Yawson, Alfred & Yusoff, Iliyas, 2021. "Do analysts’' forecast properties deter suboptimal labor investment decisions? Evidence from Regulation Fair Disclosure," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    20. Allen, Arthur & Francis, Bill B. & Wu, Qiang & Zhao, Yijiang, 2016. "Analyst coverage and corporate tax aggressiveness," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 84-98.
    21. Guo, Bing & Pérez-Castrillo, David & Toldrà-Simats, Anna, 2019. "Firms’ innovation strategy under the shadow of analyst coverage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(2), pages 456-483.

    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:spr:reaccs:v:24:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11142-019-09512-0. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.