Title: Accounting Quality and Investors’ Information Integration

Report Abstract: 

Investors encounter integration costs which prevent them from processing accounting information effectively for investment decisions. This paper provides the first direct empirical evidence on whether accounting quality affects investors’ efforts and hence the costs in integrating financial information. The study is conducted in a unique research setting utilising Chinese online interactive investor platforms where investors post questions for listed firms to respond. This allows the direct observation of integration efforts, as reflected in the number of accounting-related questions, when investors try to make sense of firms’ released financial information. We find that investors ask more accounting questions following the release of financial reports with lower accounting quality. The results hold in various robustness analyses. Findings from this research highlight the importance of accounting quality in facilitating the information integration process of investors, which is theoretically distinct from information awareness and acquisition.

Speaker: Le Ma

Date/Time: 13:00 – 16:00, 18 April, 2023

Platform: Zoom ID: 852 5380 8429 Password: 525725

Speaker Biography: 

Hayley Ma is a senior lecturer of Business Analysis at University of Technology Sydney. Le received her PhD in Accounting from University of Sydney in 2017. Her main research interest is corporate innovation and intangible capital. Her research studies how firms make investment decisions in innovation activities, how the innovation strategy and investment impacts firm performance and market value, and how innovation outcomes are measured and disclosed in financial and non-financial reporting. She also has research interest and expertise in the broad areas of information environment of capital markets, business valuation, private equity, corporate financial reporting and disclosure. She has been invited to be a visiting scholar at various world-leading universities including Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management in 2020, and the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University in 2014.