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A Closer Look at Firm--Group "Closeness"

Firm closeness or comparability is an important concept to investors. Knowing that two firms have been historically close and observing an information announcement by one of the firms gives the investor cues as to the future performance of the other firm. Furthermore, from a methodological point of view, researchers commonly control for firm--group closeness by using industrial classification schemes such as the SIC. To the extent that these schemes group dissimilar firms, the advantage of using these schemes is undermined. This paper more formally examines the comparability concept and develops two new measures of firm--group accounting closeness. Both measures are based on the co--movement of accounting fundamentals. I provide insight regarding the extent to which the SIC and GIC schemes group similar firms. Furthermore, a trading strategy utilizing information in the measures is developed and tested. Results indicate that, when industry closeness is high enough, abnormal returns in the range of 1-3% over a 1-3 day window can be earned around leader information announcement dates. Finally, I contribute to the contagion/information transfer literature, most notably Gleason et al. (2008), by showing that the contagion effects of accounting information announcements are increasing in the closeness of the industry.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uky.edu/oai:uknowledge.uky.edu:accountancy_etds-1000
Date01 January 2012
CreatorsRoss, Jonathan
PublisherUKnowledge
Source SetsUniversity of Kentucky
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations--Accountancy

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