원가의 하방경직성에 대한 정보유용성 = The information effect of cost stickiness in Korea market

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Whether the news about a particular company is good news or not is judged according to the relevant levels of profit and revenue. So whether the information effect of cost stickiness that may affect future earnings is reacted to in the market or not, will appear differently depending on the degree of impact on earnings or revenue by cost stickiness. Homburg and Nasev(2008) have verified that cost stickiness unsymmetrically affected earnings in a manner similar to conditional conservatism, and Banker and Chen(2006) have presented that cost stickiness could be used as a part of the information that forms the expected earnings of the capital market. In addition, Anderson et al.(2007) have reported that the increase of the ratio of selling and the general administrative expense of sales due to cost stickiness has a positive (+) relation with future earnings. If managers recognize declining sales as a temporary phenomenon, they will pursue a strategy to keep the raised portion of the cost of the surplus resources caused by the current decline in sales because they will expect an increase in future sales. In such cases, cost stickiness has the effect of reducing earnings for the current year, but the anticipation of increased sales will lead to the expectation of future earnings. On the other hand, if a continuing decline in sales is recognized, the managers will try to cut any additional costs related to surplus resource holding to cope with reduced revenues. In other words, there are negative effects in that cost stickiness reduces earnings for the current year, but if the market is efficient, the positive effect on future earnings will be reflected in the return. However, with the model of Anderson et al.(2003) that is commonly used with reference to cost behavior, there is the limitation that cost stickiness at the individual firm level cannot be directly measured because of measuring cross-sectional cost stickiness. In contrast, Homburg and Nasev(2008) and Weiss(2010) measured cost stickiness at the firm level. First, the criticism has been raised that the model of Homburg and Nasev(2008) which measure cost stickiness by increase of the ratio of selling and general administrative expense when sales are decreased cannot be in accord with the definition of cost stickiness, and overlooked that the ratio of selling and general administrative expense can increase due to fixed costs. On the other hand, the model of Weiss(2010) measured the difference between the rate of cost decrease for recent quarters with declining sales and the corresponding rate of cost increase for recent quarters with increasing sales, has matching issues between cost stickiness and the time of forecasting future earnings. Because it is difficult to measure cost stickiness at the firm level and it can cause problems such as measurement error, etc., related researches currently are not being actively conducted. This study analyzed cost stickiness by measuring whether the positive effect of the expected increase o future earnings was bigger than the negative effect of earnings for the current year being rebuked due to cost stickiness in the market. If the market is efficient, cost stickiness would have a positive effect on returns if the positive effect of the expectation of an increase of future earnings is greater than the negative effect o the reduction of the earnings for the current year, but if the negative effect is greater, it would have a negative effect on the return. The results of this study are as follows: First, it was presented that for cost stickiness in the market the negative information effect of the reduction of reported earnings for the current year was greater. However, cost stickiness` interaction with unexpected earnings presented significant positive(+) abnormal return since the positive effect for future earnings was greater than the negative effect of the current year. In other words, cost stickiness has an additional information effect in addition to the effect of reducing the earnings of the current year. Second, it controls the fixity of cost, the unexpected earnings of the firm representing that the cost stickiness proportion of fixed costs is relatively low showed a significant positive (+) value. It is considered that cost stickiness can be seen as negative in the market because the proportion of fixed costs of the committed cost is large. Third, for the firm that experiences sales growth for two years followed by a fall in sales, cost stickiness also interacts with unexpected earnings in the modified model, measured by cost stickiness the difference between the rate of increase of the cost when the sales increased and the drop in cost when sales decreased had desirable information effects, and also if the cost stickiness of total cost is measured, cost stickiness` interaction with unexpected earnings showed a significant positive(+) abnormal return. The results o this study can be summed up in the following points: First, the information effect of cost stickiness has two aspects. In other words, it is the effect of cost stickiness on decreased earnings for the current year and the effect on the expectation of increased future earnings. According to the analysis results of this study on cost stickiness, it was identified that the market responses for increased future earnings are higher. These results are expected to be used as important information when investors identify which company to invest in. Second, cost fixity can cause excess and shortage capacity. But a previous study (Anderson et al. 2003) has reported that it is not the cause of cost stickiness. The market response to cost stickiness was examined by controlling cost fixity based on the previous study. Because the higher the fixity of a firm, the larger the adjustment cost is, cost stickiness can be larger. Therefore, to conduct research related to cost behavior, the rationale for the need to control cost fixity was presented. Third, it prepared a base on which future study can research these fields by analyzing the capital market in conjunction with management accounting information which has posed difficulties to research that employs empirical analysis in the past. Fourth the robustness of the study was improved by efforts to elaborate on the results o analysis by measuring cost stickiness using various methods in order to minimize the problems of measurement error o cost stickiness.

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