IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/coacre/v6y1990i2p518-543.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Earnings surprises and prior insider trading: Tests of joint informativeness

Author

Listed:
  • STEVEN ALLEN
  • RAMACHANDRAN RAMANAN

Abstract

. Building on the notion that both earnings surprises and the level of insider trading are noisy signals of future prospects of the firm, this paper empirically investigates joint informativeness of the two signals surrounding earnings announcements. Classification of a large sample of firms in the time period 1977–81 based both on the levels of earnings surprise and insider trading results in a finer partition informationally, compared to using just one signal. Both additive and interactive effects are observed while analysing the security market response during the three trading days centered on the day of earnings announcements. Over a 19†day postannouncement period, the results are less pronounced. The overall pattern of results implies that each signal may contain information not contained in the other, and/or some of the noise associated with each signal may be interactively resolved at the time of earnings announcements. This inference is robust under many measurement alternatives. Résumé. À partir du principe voulant que les bénéfices imprévus ainsi que l'importance des opérations d'initiés soient des indicateurs manifestes des perspectives futures de l'entreprise, les auteurs procèdent à une étude empirique de la qualité informative conjointe des deux indicateurs dans le cadre des avis de bénéfices. La classification d'un vaste échantillon d'entreprises pendant la période 1977–1981 en fonction à la fois du niveau des bénéfices imprévus et de l'importance des opérations d'initiés permet un découpage plus subtil sur le plan informationnel que l'utilisation d'un indicateur unique. Les auteurs observent les effets tant additifs qu'interactifs de cette classification dans l'analyse de la réponse du marché boursier au cours des trois jours de bourse centrés sur le jour de la communication des avis de bénéfices. Pour la période de 19 jours suivant la période d'avis, les résultats sont moins accusés. Le modèle global des résultats suppose que chaque indicateur peut livrer de l'information que l'autre ne livre pas et qu'une partie de ce que manifeste chaque indicateur peut être résolue de façon interactive au moment de la communication des avis de bénfÌ ices. Cette induction résiste à l'épreuve de plusieurs techniques de mesure.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Allen & Ramachandran Ramanan, 1990. "Earnings surprises and prior insider trading: Tests of joint informativeness," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(2), pages 518-543, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:6:y:1990:i:2:p:518-543
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1911-3846.1990.tb00772.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1911-3846.1990.tb00772.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1911-3846.1990.tb00772.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Atiase, Rk, 1985. "Predisclosure Information, Firm Capitalization, And Security Price Behavior Around Earnings Announcements," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 21-36.
    2. Gonedes, Nj, 1975. "Risk, Information, And Effects Of Special Accounting Items On Capital-Market Equilibrium," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(2), pages 220-256.
    3. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:1:p:129-41 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Seyhun, H. Nejat, 1986. "Insiders' profits, costs of trading, and market efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 189-212, June.
    5. Jaffe, Jeffrey F, 1974. "Special Information and Insider Trading," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(3), pages 410-428, July.
    6. Gonedes, Nj, 1978. "Corporate Signaling, External Accounting, And Capital-Market Equilibrium - Evidence On Dividends, Income, And Extraordinary Items," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 26-79.
    7. John Elliott & Dale Morse & Gordon Richardson, 1984. "The Association between Insider Trading and Information Announcements," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(4), pages 521-536, Winter.
    8. Penman, Stephen H., 1985. "A Comparison of the Information Content of Insider Trading and Management Earnings Forecasts," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-17, March.
    9. Barry, Christopher B. & Brown, Stephen J., 1984. "Differential information and the small firm effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 283-294, June.
    10. Finnerty, Joseph E, 1976. "Insiders and Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1141-1148, September.
    11. Hoskin, Re & Hughes, Js & Ricks, We, 1986. "Evidence On The Incremental Information-Content Of Additional Firm Disclosures Made Concurrently With Earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24, pages 1-32.
    12. Kane, Alex & Lee, Young Ki & Marcus, Alan, 1984. "Earnings and Dividend Announcements: Is There a Corroboration Effect?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1091-1099, September.
    13. Beaver, Wh & Clarke, R & Wright, Wf, 1979. "Association Between Unsystematic Security Returns And The Magnitude Of Earnings Forecast Errors," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(2), pages 316-340.
    14. Grant, Eb, 1980. "Market Implications Of Differential Amounts Of Interim Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 255-268.
    15. Brown, Lawrence D. & Hagerman, Robert L. & Griffin, Paul A. & Zmijewski, Mark E., 1987. "An evaluation of alternative proxies for the market's assessment of unexpected earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 159-193, July.
    16. Ball, R & Brown, P, 1968. "Empirical Evaluation Of Accounting Income Numbers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 159-178.
    17. Ajinkya, Bb & Gift, Mj, 1984. "Corporate Managers Earnings Forecasts And Symmetrical Adjustments Of Market Expectations," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 425-444.
    18. Givoly, Dan & Palmon, Dan, 1985. "Insider Trading and the Exploitation of Inside Information: Some Empirical Evidence," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(1), pages 69-87, January.
    19. Trueman, Brett, 1983. "Motivating Management to Reveal Inside Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(4), pages 1253-1269, September.
    20. Dye, Ronald A, 1984. "Inside Trading and Incentives," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(3), pages 295-313, July.
    21. Lev, B & Ohlson, Ja, 1982. "Market-Based Empirical-Research In Accounting - A Review, Interpretation, And Extension," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20, pages 249-322.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paul Demeré, 2023. "Is tax return information useful to equity investors?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 1413-1465, September.
    2. Elitzur, R. Ramy & Yaari, Varda, 1995. "Executive incentive compensation and earnings manipulation in a multi-period setting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 201-219, March.
    3. Dan Givoly, 1990. "Discussion of “Earnings surprises and prior insider trading: Tests of joint informativenessâ€," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(2), pages 544-546, March.
    4. Jonathan Stanley & F. Todd De Zoort & Gary Taylor, 2009. "The association between insider trading surrounding going concern audit opinions and future bankruptcy," Managerial Auditing Journal, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 24(3), pages 290-312, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. S. P. Kothari & Charles Wasley, 2019. "Commemorating the 50‐Year Anniversary of Ball and Brown (1968): The Evolution of Capital Market Research over the Past 50 Years," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(5), pages 1117-1159, December.
    2. Feng Gu & John Q. Li, 2007. "The Credibility of Voluntary Disclosure and Insider Stock Transactions," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(4), pages 771-810, September.
    3. Frankel, Richard & Li, Xu, 2004. "Characteristics of a firm's information environment and the information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 229-259, June.
    4. Brown, Lawrence D., 1996. "Influential accounting articles, individuals, Ph.D. granting institutions and faculties: A citational analysis," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 21(7-8), pages 723-754.
    5. Van Geyt, Debby & Van Cauwenberge, Philippe & Vander Bauwhede, Heidi, 2014. "Does high-quality corporate communication reduce insider trading profitability?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 1-14.
    6. Ammer, John & Brunner, Allan D., 1997. "Are banks market timers or market makers? Explaining foreign exchange trading profits," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 43-60, April.
    7. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    8. Agrawal, Anup & Nasser, Tareque, 2012. "Insider trading in takeover targets," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 598-625.
    9. Lee, Inmoo, 2002. "Insider trading and performance of seasoned equity offering firms after controlling for exogenous trading needs," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 59-72.
    10. Ke, Bin & Huddart, Steven & Petroni, Kathy, 2003. "What insiders know about future earnings and how they use it: Evidence from insider trades," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 315-346, August.
    11. Dean Katselas, 2020. "Strategic insider trading around earnings announcements in Australia," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(4), pages 3709-3741, December.
    12. Mohamed Sellami, 2006. "Typologie des déterminants comptables de la valeur : Apports de l'approche économique de l'information dans la mesure de la valeur," Post-Print halshs-00558252, HAL.
    13. Noe, Christopher F., 1999. "Voluntary disclosures and insider transactions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 305-326, July.
    14. Laurel Franzen & Xu Li & Oktay Urcan & Mark E. Vargus, 2014. "The Market Response To Insider Sales Of Restricted Stock Versus Unrestricted Stock," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 37(1), pages 99-118, February.
    15. A. Rashad Abdel†Khalik, 1990. "Specification problems with information content of earnings: revisions and rationality of expectations and self†selection bias," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(1), pages 142-172, September.
    16. Jonathan A. Milian, 2016. "Insider sales based on short-term earnings information," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 109-128, July.
    17. Jonathan L. Rogers, 2008. "Disclosure Quality and Management Trading Incentives," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 1265-1296, December.
    18. Abu Chowdhury & Sabur Mollah & Mir A. Zaman, 2018. "What Motivates CEO and CFO Trading – Contrarian Beliefs or Superior Information?," Working Papers 2018-10, Swansea University, School of Management.
    19. Lin, Zhaoxin & Sapp, Travis R.A. & Ulmer, Jackie Rees & Parsa, Rahul, 2020. "Insider trading ahead of cyber breach announcements," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    20. Philip Hamill & Philip McIlkenny & Kwaku Opong, 2002. "Directors' Share Dealings and Company Financial Performance," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 6(3), pages 215-234, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:6:y:1990:i:2:p:518-543. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1911-3846 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.