Uniform Accounting Regimes and Managerial Learning from Stock Prices

Abstract

We investigate whether the introduction of IFRS and associated enforcement changes influence managerial learning from stock prices (proxied by revelatory price efficiency (RPE)), particularly for high-growth firms. The introduction of IFRS creates a more uniform accounting regime across different countries. Uniform accounting regimes reduce the ability of managers of high-growth firms to provide more precise information to investors. This in turn lowers the ability of informed investors to incorporate private information about growth opportunities into the stock price. As a result, managers of high-growth firms learn less from stock prices after the introduction of IFRS. Furthermore, we expect that a strong enforcement enhances this effect, as it improves compliance with IFRS, resulting in even lower precision of financial information for high-growth firms. Our findings are consistent with these predictions.