Shorter and easier is more useful: A longitudinal analysis of how financial report enforcement affects individual investors

David Pascual-Ezama, Mercedes Rodríguez Paredes, María-del-Pilar Sanchez-Martín and Beatriz Gil-Gómez de Liaño

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2018, vol. 74, issue C, 29-37

Abstract: According to the literature, individual investors rarely use accounting and financial information (AFI), even though they do not give it a particularly low valuation when asked. This behavior increases the risk to lose investments. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a new AFI format: a one-page report that is short and easy to understand, as a complement to the long and complex traditional format in order to increase the usefulness of information for investors and to decrease investment risk. Two experiments provide evidence about the increased usefulness of AFI when using the new proposed format. More importantly, it seems that results in terms of profits also improve considerably in medium (one year) and long-term (four years) investments, in contrast to more modest profits of speculative investments. Furthermore, this difference occurs regardless of the investors’ previous experience.

Keywords: Accounting information; Enforcement statements; Investment risk; Behavioral accounting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:74:y:2018:i:c:p:29-37

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2018.03.002

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