Three Essays: Conflict Risks and Investment, Terrorism and Information, and Conservatism in Accounting for Oil Price Changes
Creators: name: Li, Ao
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2019

description: This thesis consists of three stand-alone studies across a diverse spectrum of financial accounting. The first study examines the influence of conflict risk on investment efficiency for multinational enterprises. This study argues that firms with exposure to higher conflict risks are likely to experience higher information uncertainties and weaker monitoring, which consequently leads to suboptimal investment. Employing a sample of U.S.-listed firms with subsidiaries in conflict-affected countries, this study provides evidence that the higher the conflict risk firms are exposed to, the more likely they will experience underinvestment. Results shows that greater exposure to conflict risk reduces multinational enterprises' (MNEs) overall financial reporting quality. Results of this study also support the finding in prior literature that better financial reporting quality helps reduce suboptimal investment. The second study explores foreign exchange market reactions to a sample of 15 recent ISIS terrorist attacks in Europe. Prior studies suggest that capital markets react to terrorist attacks and this expectation is picked up by the press. However, much of this evidence arises from the 9/11 attacks, which may not generalize to more recent terrorist attacks. Using a sample of ISIS attacks in Europe, this study finds that these events led to decreases in returns within five minutes of some attacks. Negative returns are most pronounced around the announcement of confirmed casualties for the first attack in Belgium in 2014 and the high profile Paris attack and London Bridge attack. These responses do not persist. The effects are short-lived and foreign exchange markets recover within the day of the attack. There is also an increase in volatility around some attacks, however, any reaction is short-lived and markets recover within a day. This study shows that the economic importance of terrorist attacks in Western countries is declining. While terrorist attacks attract much attention in the media, there is relatively little impact on financial markets and any reaction is short-lived. The third study explores how earnings incorporate information reflected in product market prices. Banker, Basu, and Byzalov (2017) suggest that earnings exhibit asymmetric timeliness in the recognition of gains and losses arising from multiple factors, including stock returns, changes in operating cash flow and changes in sales. Changes in sales and cash flows can arise from changes in the volume of sales and changes in product market prices. This study extends this prior research to explore whether earnings exhibit an asymmetric pattern in timeliness of gain and loss recognition in regards to information reflected in product market price changes. Employing a sample of U.S. firms from the oil and gas sector, this study shows that earnings respond asymmetrically to lagged changes in oil prices by recognizing bad news (negative oil price changes) more fully and in a more timely fashion than good news (positive oil price changes). This study shows that product market prices provide timely information for estimating future cash flows and that product market prices are able to signal potential changes in future cash flow ahead of accounting-based performance measures.