Quantitatives Controlling – serie

The stylized facts that firms pay and investors react to dividends disregard dividend neutrality. Taking on the perspective that informational asymmetries are the central determinant for dividend value relevance, Christian Müller assumes that firm’s dividend decision conveys useful information to investors. He shows that investors use dividend changes to revise their a priori expectations about the persistence of a current earnings change. While his theoretical and empirical analyses generally imply that dividend changes constitute informative, but imperfect information signals, he further identifies situations in which they are substantial to investors. Christian Müller’s research comprehensively examines the informational role of dividend policy and provides new insights to the corresponding Bayesian investor learning process.

Financial analysts provide information in their research reports and thereby help forming expectations of a firm’s future business performance. Thus, it is essential to recognize analysts who provide the most precise forecasts and the accounting literature identifies characteristics that help finding the most accurate analysts. Tanja Klettke detects new relationships and identifies two new determinants of earnings forecast accuracy. These new determinants are an analyst’s “general forecast effort” and the “number of supplementary forecasts”. Within two comprehensive empirical investigations she proves these measures’ power to explain accuracy differences. Tanja Klettke’s research helps investors and researchers to identify more accurate earnings forecasts.

Philipp Plank analyses the question, what drives the quality of cost-systems and is the quality of cost-systems directly and at best positively related to the firms’ performance. In other words, is it worth investing in complex cost allocation systems or are there environmental and/or production settings in which less enhanced systems perform adequately. Using simulations, a benchmark firm (first-best solution) perfectly allocating cost to products is compared to firms implementing heuristic cost-allocation schemes (second-best solution) to identify the profit gap resulting from decisions based on limited information. Into this discussion, the idea of cost-stickiness is integrated, thereby indicating a new planning approach.

Dominik Nußmann comprehensively analyzes the coinsurance effect of corporate diversification by first providing a structured review of all relevant findings presented in the financial economics and accounting literature. Based on this review, he examines important accounting and economic implications of the coinsurance effect by means of two comprehensive empirical analyses. In particular, he finds that diversified firms benefit from coinsurance through financial as well as accounting synergies which entail considerable value-enhancing potentials.

The thesis of Kristina Reimer provides a comprehensive analysis of asymmetric cost behavior (also known as cost stickiness) by discussing its origin and development in the theoretical and empirical research from the 1920s of the past century up until today.

Julia Nasev examines the impact of conservative accounting numbers on valuation estimates and on real economic decisions such as cost stickiness.

Die vorliegende Dissertationsschrift basiert auf der Grundidee, Aktien mit besonderem Kurspotential herauszufiltern. Prinzipiell bieten sich hierzu zwei Strategien an, die auf unterschiedlichen Prämissen fußen: die technische und die fundamentale Anlage. Die technische Anlage setzt auf die Fortsetzung bestehender Trends und verfolgt einen kurz- bis mittelfristigen Anlagehorizont. Die fundamentale Anlage hingegen zielt darauf ab, unterbewertete Aktien zu finden, um mittel- bis langfristig an deren Kursentwicklung hin zum fairen Preis zu partizipieren. In der Arbeit werden beide Anlagestrategien mit der Absicht kombiniert, komplementäre Effekte in Bezug auf die resultierenden Renditen zu erreichen. Hierzu wird exemplarisch auf zwei zentrale Strategien zurückgegriffen: die technische Momentumstrategie und die fundamentale Cashflowstrategie. Das heißt, Aktien mit hoher vergangener Rendite und hohen operativen Cashflows werden gekauft und Aktien mit geringer vergangener Rendite und geringen operativen Cashflows werden (leer)verkauft. Die Dissertationsschrift untersucht empirisch, inwieweit eine kombinierte Strategie zum Erfolg führt. Insbesondere wird empirisch gezeigt, dass eine Strategie, die auf hohen vergangenen Renditen und hohen operativen Cashflows basiert, eine signifikant positive risikoadjustierte Rendite (Überrendite) abwirft, die die Überrenditen „reiner“ Momentum- und Cashflowstrategien übersteigt. Ebenso wirft eine Anlage in Aktien mit geringen vergangenen Renditen und geringen Cashflows signifikant negative risikoadjustierte Renditen ab. Diese risikoadjustieren Renditen widersprechen der Effizienz der Märkte und führen somit zu der Frage, welche inadäquaten Reaktionen des Marktes verantwortlich waren. Diesem Problem widmet sich die Arbeitebenfalls.

Ulf Bruggemann discusses and empirically investigates the economic consequences of mandatory switch to IFRS. He provides evidence that cross-border investments by individual investors increased following the introduction of IFRS.

​Earnings forecasts are ubiquitous in today’s financial markets. They are essential indicators of future firm performance and a starting point for firm valuation. Extremely inaccurate and overoptimistic forecasts during the most recent financial crisis have raised serious doubts regarding the reliability of such forecasts. This thesis therefore investigates new determinants of forecast errors and accuracy. In addition, new determinants of forecast revisions are examined. More specifically, the thesis answers the following questions: 1) How do analyst incentives lead to forecast errors? 2) How do changes in analyst incentives lead to forecast revisions?, and 3) What factors drive differences in forecast accuracy?

Understanding cost behavior is a fundamental element of cost accounting and the management of a firm. Deviating from the traditional assumption of symmetric cost behavior, numerous recent research studies show that costs are sticky, that is, they decrease less when sales fall than they increase when sales rise. Daniel Baumgarten comprehensively analyzes the cost stickiness phenomenon by discussing its development and all relevant findings presented in the research literature. Furthermore, he provides several suggestions for future research and discusses important implications of cost stickiness for fundamental analysis and analysts’ forecasts by means of two comprehensive empirical analyses.