How Does Unobserved Heterogeneity Affect Value Relevance?

Melik Ertugrul and Volkan Demir

Australian Accounting Review, 2018, vol. 28, issue 2, 288-301

Abstract: Most value relevance (VR) studies consider an accounting item value relevant if the regression coefficient (RC) of that item is statistically significant. Unobservable heterogeneity leads to biased RCs, interpretation of which generates incorrect inferences. To obtain unbiased RCs, the effect of unobservable heterogeneity on RCs should be mitigated. As two dimensions of unobservable heterogeneity are at the firm level and time level, outcomes with the following unobservable heterogeneity concerns are discussed: i) no fixed†effects (FE); ii) firm FE; iii) time FE; and iv) two†way (firm and time) FE. By employing a sample of Turkish firms from 2005–2014, we report several findings. First, we find that regressions with firm (time) FE yield large (low) RCs vis†à †vis regressions with no FE, and regressions with two†way FE generate balanced RCs compared to the others. Second, we compare RCs with i and iv, and conclude that the book value of equity becomes more value relevant while net income does not after controlling for unobservable heterogeneity. Last, we arbitrarily divide the entire period into two to reveal how unobserved endogeneity affects the comparison of RCs belonging to different periods. Our outcomes robustly reveal that unobserved endogeneity leads to erroneous RC comparisons.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/auar.12228

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ausact:v:28:y:2018:i:2:p:288-301

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1035-6908

Access Statistics for this article

Australian Accounting Review is currently edited by Linda M. English

More articles in Australian Accounting Review from CPA Australia
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().