{"title":"Financial statement similarity","authors":"Stephen V. Brown, Guang Ma, Jennifer Wu Tucker","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.12885","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We propose financial statement similarity as a measure of financial reporting comparability. The firm-pair version of our measure reflects the degree to which two firms report similar relations within their financial statement items; this version can help managers and market participants identify peer firms. The firm-year version of our measure reflects the degree to which a firm reports financial statement relations that are similar to other members of its industry; this version can help market participants, regulators, and auditors screen firms for further attention. Our measure uses the presence and amounts of almost all financial items reported by a firm. We validate our measure in four sets of analyses to establish concurrent validity and in three sets of analyses to establish predictive validity. In all these tests, we contrast our measure with the comparability measure in De Franco et al. (2011) and a multivariate measure that considers the presence, but not amounts, of financial statement items. Our measure outperforms the alternatives and can be a useful tool for users.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Contemporary Accounting Research","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1911-3846.12885","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
We propose financial statement similarity as a measure of financial reporting comparability. The firm-pair version of our measure reflects the degree to which two firms report similar relations within their financial statement items; this version can help managers and market participants identify peer firms. The firm-year version of our measure reflects the degree to which a firm reports financial statement relations that are similar to other members of its industry; this version can help market participants, regulators, and auditors screen firms for further attention. Our measure uses the presence and amounts of almost all financial items reported by a firm. We validate our measure in four sets of analyses to establish concurrent validity and in three sets of analyses to establish predictive validity. In all these tests, we contrast our measure with the comparability measure in De Franco et al. (2011) and a multivariate measure that considers the presence, but not amounts, of financial statement items. Our measure outperforms the alternatives and can be a useful tool for users.
期刊介绍:
Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR) is the premiere research journal of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association, which publishes leading- edge research that contributes to our understanding of all aspects of accounting"s role within organizations, markets or society. Canadian based, increasingly global in scope, CAR seeks to reflect the geographical and intellectual diversity in accounting research. To accomplish this, CAR will continue to publish in its traditional areas of excellence, while seeking to more fully represent other research streams in its pages, so as to continue and expand its tradition of excellence.