Large Shareholder Portfolio Diversification, Earnings and Disclosure Quality and Intra-Industry Connectedness

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Department of accounting, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Kurdistan, Iran

Abstract

 Introduction
Financial statements are among the most important sources of information for investors and other decision-makers. Hence, the evaluation of factors affecting financial reporting quality has gained great attention from researchers. Psychological and economic theories suggest that people have learning constraints, such that resources devoted toward one task reduce the resources available for other tasks (Kahneman, 1973; Peng, 2005; Peng and Xiong, 2006). Various studies provide empirical evidence that even professional market participants are subject to capacity constraints arising from limited time and attention (Chakrabarty and Moulton, 2012; Corwin and Coughenour, 2008; Harford et al., 2019; Schmidt, 2019). When shareholders spread their portfolio wealth among more firms, the weight of firms in the portfolio decrease, the benefit from gathering private information about a particular firm decreases, and shareholders considering resource constraints would have a great motivation to, instead of gathering private information acquisition through close interactions with management, use public disclosure as a cost-effective alternative information channel to reduce uncertainty about portfolio firms (Peng, 2005). Hence, shareholders would probably demand greater public information and there would be more pressure on the managers to increase the amount and quality of public financial disclosure. On the other hand, considering the intra-industry information transfer phenomenon, intra-industry connectedness can have a great impact on public information disclosure demand and manager behavior regarding financial information reporting (Sajjadi and Pourheydari, 2018). Hence there is a great probability that intra-industry connectedness moderates the relationship between large shareholder portfolio diversification and financial reporting quality. This study aims to evaluate the relation between large shareholder portfolio diversification, earnings quality, disclosure quality, and intra-industry connectedness.
 
 Hypothesis
Based on the abovementioned theoretical foundations and evidence from previous works showing the effects of large shareholder portfolio diversification and intra-industry connectedness on managers' behavior and information demand satisfaction, the research hypotheses were formulated as follows:
H1: large shareholder portfolio diversification effects earnings quality.
H2: large shareholder portfolio diversification effects financial reporting quality.
H3: Intra-industry connectedness moderates the relationship between large shareholder portfolio diversification and earnings quality.
H4: Intra-industry connectedness moderates the relationship between large shareholder portfolio diversification and financial reporting quality.
 
 Method
A sample including 153 firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) over the 2014 to 2021 period was used for hypothesis testing. An index was made based on Herfindahl–Hirschman index and was used as an indicator of large shareholder portfolio diversification. The absolute value of the covariance of change in sales across all firms in the same industry for each industry was calculated as the Intra-industry connectedness measurement. This covariance factor is calculated based on the decomposition of the aggregate volatility of sales, presented and used in prior studies (e.g., Comin and Philippon, 2005; Kim and Kwon, 2016; Pollack, 2013; Chiu, 2014). The measure of earnings quality is based on the Dechow and Dichev (2002) model. Following Francis et al. (2005) and Chiu (2014), the standard deviation of the firm’s residuals over the prior three years is used as a measure of earnings quality. Disclosure quality is measured based on scoring which has been published by the Tehran Security Exchange each year.
 
 Results
Results show a positive association between large shareholder portfolio diversification, financial reporting quality, and earnings quality. The relationship between large shareholder portfolio diversification and financial reporting quality is negatively moderated by intra-industry connectedness, but there is no significant moderating effect of intra-industry connectedness in the relationship between large shareholder portfolio diversification and earnings quality.
 
 Conclusion
Based on the results it can be said that large shareholder portfolio diversification and intra-industry connectedness have a significant impact on earnings and financial reporting quality and should be considered by investments and other decision-makers in risk assessment. Further research should be conducted to evaluate the impact of large shareholder portfolio diversification on other aspects of financial reporting.
 
 

Keywords

References

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History

  • Receive Date: 13 April 2022
  • Revise Date: 16 July 2022
  • Accept Date: 16 July 2022

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