Does XBRL adoption improve earnings informativeness?

Abstract

This study provides the first empirical evidence that the informativeness of future earnings will be affected by adopting eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) which has been required by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) since January 30 2009 Given that releasing XBRL-formatted financial reports is deemed to enhance the comparability of financial information which is able to increase earnings informativeness measured by future earnings response coefficient (FERC) Using two groups of samples 201 companies with 804 observations and 1 860 companies with 7 446 observations for the fiscal years 2006 2007 2009 and 2010 we find that XBRL adoption does indeed improve the informativeness of financial information which means current stock prices convey more information about future earnings after adopting XBRL

Date of Award	2015 Jul 28
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ting-Kai Chou (Supervisor)