Under present financial accounting standards, in Japan and in U.S., firms can hoose pension discount rates, which they use for earnings measurement, at their discretion. First, this paper investigates, what factors affect their choice of pension discount rates. The sample firms in this paper...

This paper investigates the value relevance of segment earnings in railroad companies. Operating profits in transportation and real estate business are value relevant. While operating losses in leisure business contains large noise, positive earnings is value relevant. Earnings in other segments...

This paper investigates whether earnings of the firms, which belong to the sluggish industries under recent recession in Japan, is value relevant. It is often said that, while the relevance of earnings is recently declining, the relevance of book value of equity increases gradually. Moreover, it...

It is conceived that the percentage of completion method make periodical earnings smoother than the completed contract method and that it can reflect construction activities of the firm on earnings more timely. Based on this intuition, some people believe that earnings recognized by the...

In 2000, the reform of consolidated financial statements changed the income statement section where amortization of goodwill and gains and losses from interest method should be disclosed. The results in this paper show that the reform may improve the value relevance of operating profits and...

This study investigates the value relevance of nuclear decommissioning costs and back end costs (nuclear recycle costs), which are accruals related to nuclear power plants in electric utilities. We analyze the association between those accruals and stock price levels at the end of fiscal year,...

The purpose of this paper is to confirm how international academicians evaluate the Japanese accounting system. This paper surveys prior studies on the international comparison (including Japan) of accounting information and reexamines the empirical findings on the usefulness of earnings...

This paper investigates the relationship between value relevance of the multi-step income statement and managerial opportunistic behavior. In Japan, net income is disclosed by three steps, i.e., 1) operating profits from core operating activity, 2) ordinary income, measured by adding gains and...

This paper investigates the attributes of the multi-step income 1) operating profits, 2) earnings before tax, special and extra-ordinary items, and 3) net income, and then this paper confirms the rationality of the multi-step performance reporting. We examine the relationship between the...

This paper investigates the value relevance of earnings in four transportation industries (railroad, transportation by land, shipping, and warehouse). The business environments in those industries are not the same as those in manufacturing industry, since a part of transportation business in...