Risk, Return, Security-Valuation and the Stochastic Behavior of Accounting Numbers

There is a considerable body of empirical research in accounting devoted to the analysis of relationships between accounting numbers and security prices. Very roughly, this body of research may be classified into three different categories: (i) share price valuation models and the determination of market equity values; (ii) the measurement of “unexpected earnings” and their contemporaneous association with security returns; (iii) the forecasting of future security returns. The selection and definition of accounting numbers in most of these types of studies have, by and large, been quite heuristic. The accounting variables are usually selected with little consideration given to their empirical time-series behavior; more important appears to be their intrinsic economic connotations. The approaches can thus be thought of as stipulating the existence of “real” economic variables, e.g., real income for a period, and then using numbers of published accounting statements as estimates of the real variables. The errors in estimates of the true variables are then often minimized by the use of aggregation procedures and the diversification effects of such procedures. The postulating of real economic variables has another methodological advantage: it permits the use of comparative statics analysis of corporate behavior and its effect on equity risk and return. For example, Hamada [7], among others, has shown that leverage affects risk in the usually hypothesized manner but this analytical result depends on the assumption that leverage and earnings are real and unambiguous economic variables without “measurement” errors.