Essays on the informativeness of earnings

This dissertation consists of three stand-alone but related essays in the broad area of earnings information and capital markets. The first paper examines the speed with which earnings information (as proxied by analysts’ earnings forecast updates) finds its way into the market place. Rather than examining the efficiency of the stock market per se, this essay effectively provides novel evidence on the extent to which the market for Australian firms’ earnings-related information is efficient. The second essay considers the extent to which statutory financial reporting provides timely information for Australian firms. This essay uses a method which has the important advantage of avoiding the need to specify ex-ante earnings expectations and is therefore focussed around how much periodic stock price variability is attributable to the specific windows (i.e., periods) around which earnings are released. The third and final essay applies this same methodology to considering whether the frequency of statutory reporting (i.e., semi-annual versus quarterly) is systematically associated with the informativeness of these disclosures and uses data from member countries of the G20.

Author dc:creator

• Tong, Alex Kar Fai

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• au.edu.uts.lib/ppc
• The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
• info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Language dc:language.iso

en_AU

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/136119

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:opus.lib.uts.edu.au:10453/136119