Information content of annual earnings a nnouncements : a comparative study

Beaver (1968) examines the information content of annual earnings announcements by evaluating the changes in trading volume and return volatility. In this study, we first replicate Beaver (1968) for a comprehensive sample of US firms from 1995 to 2012 and then apply the same approach to a sample of Chinese firms in the same period. Similar to Beaver (1968), we find that with the US data, there is abnormally high trading volume and return volatility during the earnings announcement week. With the Chinese data, we find that Chinese firms’ earnings announcements are also accompanied by abnormal trading volume and abnormal return volatility. Furthermore, we find that there is more information leakage prior to the announcement dates and more prolonged post-announcement drift in trading volume and return volatility for Chinese firms.