IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uts/wpaper/116.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Solving the Price-Earnings Puzzle

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Accounting and finance professionals have empirically known that in the long run stock prices are roughly proportional to earnings. However, econometric testing could not been able to verify this expected contribution of earnings to stock prices, thus formed the price-earnings (PE) puzzle in the accounting literature. This paper seeks to solve this puzzle by allowing the earnings response coefficient to be a variable instead of a constant, and shows that the PE puzzle turns out to be a phenomenon of type I spurious regression in econometrics.

Suggested Citation

  • Carl Chiarella & Shenhuai Gao, 2002. "Solving the Price-Earnings Puzzle," Working Paper Series 116, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    • Handle: RePEc:uts:wpaper:116
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.finance.uts.edu.au/research/wpapers/wp116.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    2. Easton, Peter D. & Harris, Trevor S. & Ohlson, James A., 1992. "Aggregate accounting earnings can explain most of security returns : The case of long return intervals," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2-3), pages 119-142, August.
    3. Christie, Andrew A., 1987. "On cross-sectional analysis in accounting research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 231-258, December.
    4. Kothari, S. P. & Zimmerman, Jerold L., 1995. "Price and return models," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 155-192, September.
    5. Engle, Robert & Granger, Clive, 2015. "Co-integration and error correction: Representation, estimation, and testing," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 39(3), pages 106-135.
    6. Ball, R & Brown, P, 1968. "Empirical Evaluation Of Accounting Income Numbers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 159-178.
    7. Carl Chiarella & Shenhuai Gao, 2002. "Modelling the Value of the S&P 500 - A System Dynamics Perspective," Working Paper Series 115, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    8. Collins, Daniel W. & Kothari, S. P. & Shanken, Jay & Sloan, Richard G., 1994. "Lack of timeliness and noise as explanations for the low contemporaneuos return-earnings association," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 289-324, November.
    9. Lev, B, 1989. "On The Usefulness Of Earnings And Earnings Research - Lessons And Directions From 2 Decades Of Empirical-Research," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27, pages 153-192.
    10. Carl Chiarella & Shenhuai Gao, 2002. "Type I Spurious Regression in Econometrics," Working Paper Series 114, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    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. Carl Chiarella & Shenhuai Gao, 2002. "Type I Spurious Regression in Econometrics," Working Paper Series 114, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    2. Sanna, Dario, 2020. "A Fast and Parsimonious Way to Estimate the Implied Rate of Return of Equity," MPRA Paper 102003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Carl Chiarella & Shenhuai Gao, 2002. "Modelling the Value of the S&P 500 - A System Dynamics Perspective," Working Paper Series 115, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.

    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. Kothari, S. P. & Zimmerman, Jerold L., 1995. "Price and return models," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 155-192, September.
    2. Pascal Dumontier & Real Labelle, 1998. "Accounting earnings and firm valuation: the French case," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(2), pages 163-183.
    3. Ray Ball & Lakshmanan Shivakumar, 2008. "How Much New Information Is There in Earnings?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 975-1016, December.
    4. Denis Cormier & Michel Magnan & Bernard Morard, 2000. "The contractual and value relevance of reported earnings in a dividend-focused environment," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(3), pages 387-417.
    5. S. P. Kothari & Charles Wasley, 2019. "Commemorating the 50‐Year Anniversary of Ball and Brown (1968): The Evolution of Capital Market Research over the Past 50 Years," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(5), pages 1117-1159, December.
    6. Rashid Al-Qenae & Carmen Li & Bob Wearing, 2002. "The Information Content of Earnings on Stock Prices: The Kuwait Stock Exchange," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 6(3-4), pages 197-221, September.
    7. Dimitrios I. Maditinos & Željko Šević & Jelena Stankevičienė & Nikolaos Karakoltsidis, 2013. "Earnings response coefficients in the Greek market," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 414-431, April.
    8. Basu, Sudipta, 1997. "The conservatism principle and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 3-37, December.
    9. Hannu, Schadewitz, 1997. "Financial and nonfinancial information in interim reports: Determinants and implications," MPRA Paper 44292, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Nikos Vafeas & Lenos Trigeorgis & Xenia Georgiou, 1998. "The usefulness of earnings in explaining stock returns in an emerging market: the case of Cyprus," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 105-124.
    11. Gil Sadka, 2007. "Understanding Stock Price Volatility: The Role of Earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 199-228, March.
    12. Tswei, Keshin, 2013. "Is transaction price more value relevant compared to accounting information? An investigation of a time-series approach," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1062-1078.
    13. Thomas Schleicher & Martin Walker, 1999. "Share price anticipation of earnings and management's discussion of operations and financing," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 321-335.
    14. Ayers, Benjamin & Freeman, Robert N., 1997. "Market assessment of industry and firm earnings information," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 205-218, December.
    15. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    16. Pascal Dumontier & Bernard Raffournier, 2002. "Accounting and capital markets: a survey of the European evidence," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 119-151.
    17. Ruey S. Tsay & Yi-Mien Lin & Hsiao-Wen Wang, 2009. "Residual income, non-earnings information, and information content," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(6), pages 487-511.
    18. Wen He & Hwee Cheng Tan & Leon Wong, 2020. "Return windows and the value relevance of earnings," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(3), pages 2549-2583, September.
    19. Easterday, Kathryn E. & Sen, Pradyot K., 2016. "Is the January effect rational? Insights from the accounting valuation model," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 168-185.
    20. Bandyopadhyay, Sati P. & Brown, Lawrence D. & Richardson, Gordon D., 1995. "Analysts' use of earnings forecasts in predicting stock returns: Forecast horizon effects," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 429-445, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    price (return)-earnings relation; earnings response coefficient; type I spurious regresssion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

    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:uts:wpaper:116. 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: Duncan Ford (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfutsau.html .

    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.