Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Publication Date

3-2010

Publisher

The Clute Institute

Source Publication

International Business & Economics Research Journal

Source ISSN

1535-0754

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of foreign operations and their financial disclosure on earnings quality in terms of accounting conservatism (timely recognizing losses). In a large (7,311 corporate years) sample of U.S. corporations, we find earnings of firms with multinational operations (MNCs) tend to be of lower quality and are reported less conservatively than those without foreign operations (domestic firms). Further, by looking at the geographic segment information disclosed by MNCs, we find that earnings conservatism gets improved if a MNC reports “clean” segment information of foreign operations; wherein operating results of MNC are broken down by geographic regions (continent or country) and reported separately. This study has implications for monitoring foreign operations and regulations that may improve earnings quality in the global economy.

Comments

Published version. International Business & Economics Research Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3 (March 2010): 109-119. DOI. © 2010 Clute Institute. Used with permission.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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