Abstract
The association between accounting earnings and the stock price of an entity is the subject that has been most heavily researched during the past 25 years in accounting literature. Researcher's common finding is that there are positive relationships between accounting earnings and stock prices. However, the explanatory power of accounting earnings which was measured by $R^2$ of regression functions used was rather low. To be connected with these low results, The prior studies propose that there will be additional information, errors in variables. This study investigates empirically determinants of earnings response coefficients(ERCs), which measure the correlation between earnings and stock prices, using earnings level / change, as the dependent variable in the return/earnings regression. Specifically, the thesis tests whether the factors such as earnings persistence, growth, systematic risk, image, information asymmetry and firm size. specially, the determinable variables of ERC are explained in detail. The image / information asymmetry variables are selected to be connected with additional information stand point, The debt / growth variables are selected to be connected with errors in variables. In this study, The sample of firms, listed in Korean Stock Exchange was drawn from the KIS-DATA and was required to meet the following criteria: (1) Annual accounting earnings were available over the 1986-1999 period on the KIS-FAS to allow computation of variables parameter; (2) sufficient return data for estimation of market model parameters were available on the KIS-SMAT month returns: (3) each firm had a fiscal year ending in December throughout the study period. Implementation of these criteria yielded a sample of 1,141 firm-year observation over the 10-year(1990-1999) period. A conventional regression specification would use stock returns(abnormal returns) as a dependent variable and accounting earnings(unexpected earnings) changes interacted with other factors as independent variables. In this study, I examined the relation between other factors and the RRC by using reverse regression. For an empirical test, eight hypotheses(including six lower-hypotheses) were tested. The results of the performed empirical analysis can be summarized as follows; The first, The relationship between persistence of earnings and ERC have significance of each by itself, this result accord with one of the prior studies. The second, The relationship between growth and ERC have not significance. The third, The relationship between image and ERC have significance of each by itself, but a forecast code doesn't present. This fact shows that image cost does not effect on market management share, is used to prevent market occupancy decrease. The fourth, The relationship between information asymmetry variable and ERC have significance of each by. The fifth, The relationship between systematic risk$(\beta)$ and ERC have not significance. The sixth, The relationship between debt ratio and ERC have significance of each by itself, but a forecast code doesn't present. This fact is judged that it is due to the effect of financial leverage effect and a tendency of interest.