Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Meeting hall “Mikado”, which can accommodate up to 50 people
Presentations
Intangible Liabilities
Prof. Hamid Boustanifar1, Prof. Arnt Verriest2
1EDHEC Business School, France; 2KU Leuven
When liabilities are deemed improbable or cannot be reliably estimated by management, they are not recorded on the balance sheet. Instead, they are disclosed qualitatively in the company's filings. Examples include obligations related to pending or future lawsuits, product liability, environmental matters, false advertising, or patent and copyright infringements. We refer to these obligations as intangible liabilities (IL). We construct a firm-level, text-based measure of IL. IL is positively related to firm size, volatility, and share turnover, and is negatively correlated with accounting performance, abnormal returns, and Tobin’s Q. IL also predictably varies across industries. Moreover, IL predicts future lawsuits against firms and the future deterioration of their reputations. Companies with higher IL trade at lower valuation ratios and have significantly higher future crash risks. A portfolio that is long on high IL and short on low IL yields an annual abnormal return of 3% after accounting for common factors. Overall, the results suggest that intangible liabilities are a significant determinant of firm value and stock returns.