Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare the value relevance of various accounting information disclosed in financial statements of manufacturing companies listed on the stock markets of Korea, Japan, and China over ten years from 2006 to 2015. Design/methodology/approach The study uses Ohlson (1995) valuation model for empirical investigation and the financial data extracted from the OSIRIS DB to analyze the enterprise value relevance of accounting information for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese companies and to investigate the differences among them. Findings The results of the empirical analysis are as follows. First, the coefficient of accounting earnings is the highest in the samples of all firms in Korea, Japan, and China, followed by the coefficients for operating income, net cash flow, book value, and net operating cash flows. Next, Japan has the largest book value, followed by Korea, but China has a negative value. Japan has the largest coefficient of accounting earnings and net operating cash flow, followed by Korea and China. Japan has the largest coefficient of net cash flow and operating income, followed by China and Korea. The results show that the value relevance of accounting earnings is the largest among independent variables related to firm value, but the net operating cash flow is the smallest. In addition, the authors observe that the coefficient of Japan is the largest of all independent variables when compared by country. Originality/value The contribution of this study is that it shows the comparative value relevance of accounting information in most economically developed Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, and China. In addition, it is worth showing the characteristics of the national value decision variable by showing different incremental value relevance levels among the three countries.

This article investigates whether investment in education and training and welfare expenses can help promote corporate value. If such expenditures are found to affect enterprise value, this evidence should lead to a revision of the current accounting treatment of education and training and welfare expenses in the Republic of Korea. The empirical results show that the book value of equity, education and training expenses and welfare costs has positive relationships with enterprise value, whereas accounting earnings have significantly negative effects on them in both the full samples and subsamples (i.e., KOSPI, KOSDAQ, large-sized, small and medium-sized firms, high-tech, and low-tech groups). The results of this study provide empirical evidence on the effects of welfare and training costs on firm value. They suggest a need to discuss investments in human capital such as welfare and education and training expenses, which have been treated as expenses for the past decades. However, the results are based only on companies listed on the Korean capital market. It is necessary to analyse firms in other countries, such as Japan, the USA and China.

No abstract

This paper investigates the persistence of earnings and market reaction in Korean stock markets over the period of 2000-2008. The empirical results of this paper show that Korean stock market has a high level of earnings persistence and this is more attributed to cash flows than accruals. The study also suggests that Korean stock market participants usually react more on cash flows than accruals.

No abstract