Financial Information Transparency and Informativeness Content of Earnings

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between informativeness of earnings as proxy for earning-return relationship and levels of transparency of financial information in Iran. We select 184 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) for the years 1386 and 1387. Then, the sample firms were divided into firms with low and firms with high financial information transparency. The study uses Multiple Liner Regression Models to test the relationship between financial information transparency and the informativeness of earnings. The results show that there are significant reductions on earnings response coefficient for the firms with higher financial information transparency. The results verify that in more transparent firms the relevant information earnings could be reflected in advance in stock prices. Therefore, earnings informativeness in such firms is lower than the others.

Keywords

• financial information transparency
• disclosure quality
• earnings response coefficient
• earnings informativeness