Ball and Brown
In 1968 Raymond Ball and Phillip Brown published ‘An empirical evaluation of accounting income numbers’ in the Journal of Accounting research. After an initial lukewarm response from the academic community it rapidly became what the American Accounting Association now calls ‘the seed that made a difference’. The purpose of this essay is to introduce the study of Ball and Brown(motivations, research questions and findings) and identify its significant contributions in capital markets research.
Introduction
According to the resources provided, Ball and Brown described the motivation for their study as a test of existing scholarly research that painted a dim picture of reported earnings. The early articles concluded that earnings could not be informative, and therefore major changes to accounting practice where necessary to correct the problem.
In their research, Ball and Brown sought to answer the simple fundamental research question: are accounting income numbers useful? Their position was summarised: “An empirical evaluation of accounting income numbers requires agreement as to what real-world outcome constitutes an appropriate test of usefulness. Because net income is a number of particular interest to investors, the outcome we use as a predictive criterion is the investment decision as it is reflected in security prices”(Ball and Brown 1968).
Ball and Brown found that when stocks had a positive income surprise, the abnormal stock price returns for the event window were also likely to be positive, and vice versa. They also found that a majority of the increase in the abnormal returns was before the announcement date, which implied that analysts have fairly accurate forecasts of whether firms will outperform or underperform.
Significance of their contributions
Although there does have some limitations in Ball and Brown’s study, it had a significant impact on later research. Ball and Brown (1968) provide compelling evidence that there is information
Introduction
According to the resources provided, Ball and Brown described the motivation for their study as a test of existing scholarly research that painted a dim picture of reported earnings. The early articles concluded that earnings could not be informative, and therefore major changes to accounting practice where necessary to correct the problem.
In their research, Ball and Brown sought to answer the simple fundamental research question: are accounting income numbers useful? Their position was summarised: “An empirical evaluation of accounting income numbers requires agreement as to what real-world outcome constitutes an appropriate test of usefulness. Because net income is a number of particular interest to investors, the outcome we use as a predictive criterion is the investment decision as it is reflected in security prices”(Ball and Brown 1968).
Ball and Brown found that when stocks had a positive income surprise, the abnormal stock price returns for the event window were also likely to be positive, and vice versa. They also found that a majority of the increase in the abnormal returns was before the announcement date, which implied that analysts have fairly accurate forecasts of whether firms will outperform or underperform.
Significance of their contributions
Although there does have some limitations in Ball and Brown’s study, it had a significant impact on later research. Ball and Brown (1968) provide compelling evidence that there is information
References: Jackson, S. (1999), “Australia: Towns get by without their banks”, The Australian. pp. 3. Phillips, N. and Malhotra, N. (2008). ‘Taking social construction seriously: extending the discursiveapproach in institutional theory’. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Sahlin, K. and Suddaby, R. (Eds),Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism. London: Sage, 602–720. How can responsible international mining and oil companies use their social investment funds? Nikolai, Bazley, and Jefferson Jones. Intermediate Accounting. South-Western College Pub, 209 Massoud, M. and C. Raiborn(2003), “Accounting for Goodwill: Are We Better Off?,” Review of Business, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 26-32. Ball and Brown (1968): The seed that made a difference, Ball, R., and Brown, P. (1968), “An empirical evaluation of accounting income numbers”, Journal of Accounting Research 6 (2), pp.159-178 Watts and Zimmerman (1979), “The Demand for and Supply of Accounting Theories: The Market for Excuses”, The Accounting Review, Vol. 54, No. 2, American Accounting Association. ----------------------- 1