Investigating the Effect of Financial Reporting Quality and Information Asymmetry on Stock Price Delay

Investigating the Effect of Financial Reporting Quality and Information Asymmetry on Stock Price Delay Dr. Abbas Aflatooni* ntroduction In a perfect capital market where investors make decisions i ational manner and there is complete information regarding the as eing traded, the information quickly is and fully reflected in st rices. However, many studies (such as Barry and Brown, 1984; A g and Verdi, 2012) indicate a lack of complete information on arkets. Incomplete and vague information affects stock prices at lo peeds and prevent from timely stock prices discovery (Verrecchia, 1 Callen, Govindaraj and Xu, 2000). From the viewpoint of invest ome stocks that are more attractive than other stocks get the attentio ost investors who follow the news and information on those stock his condition, the news and information are reflected in the price entioned stocks more quickly than other stocks. However, there tocks that are less attractive to investors and the relevant informat hus their prices are adjusted in lower speeds. In accounting and fin iterature, this subject is named Stock Price Delay (Hirshleifer, and T 006; Callen, Khan, and Lu, 2012).The available information on fir sually voluminous and the most of investors have limited abilit rocess the high volume of information. In this condition, in orde ake investment decisions, they spend more time and collect further
Assistant Professor of Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Bu Sina University of Hamedan, Iran
4 Journal of Accounting Advances (J.A.A)
recise information. This causes the information to be reflected in s rices with time delay. Also, the low quality of issued information nformation asymmetry increase the ambiguity of information ecrease the reflection rate of information on stock prices. The importance of research in this area arises from the fact that w nformation is reflected in the stock price with more delay, nformational efficiency of capital market will disappear. In this ma he prices do not reflect the intrinsic value of stock and the ca arkets cannot allocate their resources among firms optimally (Cal han, and Lu, 2012). Therefore, identification of factors affecting henomenon of stock price delay and dealing with them can increase nformational and allocative efficiency of capital market.
esearch Hypotheses The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of finan eporting quality and information asymmetry on stock price delay. his end, based on the research objective, the theoretical framework revious researches, the research hypotheses are as follows: H-1: The financial reporting quality is negatively associated tock price delay. H-2: The information asymmetry is positively associated with st rice delay. To investigate and compare the effect of financial reporting qu nd information asymmetry on stock price delay simultaneously, hird hypothesis is as follows: H-3: The intensity of the relationships between the fina eporting quality and information asymmetry with stock price delay ot significantly different from each other.
Methods This research is an applied, quantitative and retrospective study. esearch data are gathered from Rahavard Novin database, the Codal he site of Tehran stock exchange organization referring to its rchives. To measure the dependent variable (stock price delay),
Extended Abstracts of the Persian Articles in English
pproach of Hou, and Moskowitz (2005) is used. To calculate nformation asymmetry, the presented measure by Venkatesh and Ch 1986) is applied and to measure the financial reporting quality, dat isclosure quality scores, are obtained from TSE announcemen Corporate Rating based on Disclosure Quality and Approp nformation”. This research, investigates the effects of financial repor uality and information asymmetry on the stock price delay from 200 he end of 2013 in a sample including 112 firms listed in Tehran S xchange. To test the research hypotheses, the multivariate regress ith panel data are applied.
esults The research results show that the increase in financial repor uality and decrease in information asymmetry among stock tra ecreases the stock price delay. On the other hand, financial repor uality (information asymmetry) is negatively (positively) relate tock price delay.
iscussion and Conclusion In a capital market with rational investors and existence of comp nformation, such information is quickly and completely reflecte tock prices. However, the voluminous studies review the informa mperfections (such as asymmetric information and low qualit nformation (e.g., Barry and Brown, 1984; Merton, 1987; Eas vidkjaer, and O’Hara, 2002; Hou and Moskowitz, 2005; Lam Leuz, and Verrecchia, 2007; Akins, Ng, and Verdi, 2012). They find he incomplete and ambiguous information decrease the reflection s f information in stock prices. This research shows that the increase in reporting quality incre he reflection speed of information in stock prices and thus decreases tock price delay. The reason is that an increase in reporting qu ecreases the ambiguous aspects of information, thus the investors s ess time on process information and make less mistakes in stock pric
6 Journal of Accounting Advances (J.A.A)
his leads to the information to be more quickly and more accura eflected in the stock price. These results are consistent with the find f Callen, Khan, and Lu (2012), Javanmard, M., & Pourmousa (20 Pourzamani and Ghamari (2014) and Hassas Yegane and Omidi (20 lso, this research investigates the relationship between informa symmetry and stock price delay and finds that an increase nformation asymmetry decreases the reflection speed of informatio tock prices and increases the stock price delay. This is becaus nformation asymmetry environment, to make investment decisi nvestors are faced with a high degree of uncertainty and risk. For eason, to decrease the risk of investment decisions, they spend ime and collect more accurate information causing the information t eflected in the stock price with more time delay. This findin omparable to the results of Gordon and Wu (2014). Also, the rese esults show that the relationship between financial reporting quality tock price delay is significantly stronger than that of informa symmetry and the mentioned variables cannot be used interchangeab Based on the research results and the negative consequences of st rice delay, the managers are advised to provide high quality finan eporting and prevent the mentioned phenomenon. Also, the practitio f financial market are advised to select and execute the approp olicies and increase the transparency of information because this l o informational and allocative efficiency of capital market. Becaus he importance of identification of factors affecting the stock price d nd dealing with them, the researchers are advised to study the effe acroeconomics factors (such as exchange rate fluctuations, oil pr nd inflation rate) on stock price delay.