Earnings quality measures and excess returns: A case study of Tehran Stock Exchange

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the relationship between earning quality measure and excess returns on selected firms trading on Tehran Stock Exchange. The purpose of this study is to find the relative advantage of income figures reported in formal financial statements. The study uses hedge return, six accounting ratios and three market ratios and performs the study over the period of 2001-2011 using 56 firms whose shares were traded on Tehran Stock Exchange. The proposed study uses regression analysis as well as structural equation modeling. The results of this study indicate that market based figures are more influencing than accounting based ratios on hedge return. In other words, hedge return for persistency index was more predictable than smoothness and abnormal accruals. However, on the contrary to what we expected, hedge return for accruals was not more than other accounting based figures.