Capital Market Reactions to Accounting Earnings Announcements in an International Context

Abstract

This study examines the association of four factors with U.S. securities market reactions to annual earnings announcements by non-U.S. multinational corporations and by a control sample of U.S. firms. The four factors examined are firm size, the magnitude of earnings change, timeliness, and the presence or absence of a concurrent dividend announcement. The non-U.S. corporations are from five countries - Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Philippines, and United Kingdom. Results for the group of non-U.S. firms indicate that firm size and timeliness are significant explanatory variables. For the control sample of U.S. firms, only size is significant.