Forward
American CPA Hoffman put forward the idea of XBRL in 1998.Then the North America, Europe and Asia, the leading capital markets all over the world continue to research the XBRL and implement the XBRL financial report in-depth from voluntary submitted to mandatory. XBRL is so rapidly adopted by many countries especially the western mature capital market, because it has effectively improved the quality of information, and solved the problem of non-structured financial data.
According to the definition of XBRL international organization,XBRL is an application in the financial report information exchange based on XML. It is the newest technique applied for financial information processing. It uses the method of marking in XML, the labelling financial data in the report on various accounting concept, to achieve self-description of financial report data. The computer can establish the relationship between the data and accounting concept in financial report,so as to “read” the financial report.
Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and Shenzhen Stock Exchange(SZSE) set about the research of XBRL in 2002, under the leadership of the CSRC. With a basic research, exploration and promotion, XBRL has been put into full implementation. In December 2008, the SSE decided to fully promote the disclosure of annual report by listed company in the form of XBRL and asked them submit to both the PDF format file and the XBRL instance document from 2008 annual report, and disclosed them in the SSE website at the same time. The SZSE, launched the“XBRL Listed Company Information Service Platform” at the beginning of 2008 annual report disclosure and required the listed company synchronous disclose XBRL financial report.
How is the effect? There are few literatures taste in empirical research in China. The implementation of XBRL financial report is not only the implementation of the new technology, but also the information disclosure policy. Does XBRL financial report achieve the expected effect in improving the efficiency? For ordinary users, does XBRL financial report have a positive impact on their information search costs, information analysis and processing capacity and efficiency of information usage? For securities analysts, the company’s financial report is the most important source of information for their forecast research activities. Is XBRL financial report helpful to improve the tracking efficiency and analyst forecast quality? Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. The implementation of a new technology or a new policies needs to practice,and to make optimization or fine tuning. So it is necessary to conduct indepth research on the implementation effect of XBRL financial report.
This book is mainly based on the effect of XBRL on the information efficiency; studying the effect of implementation of XBRL financial report conducted by SSE, and SZSE, from the angle of stock price synchronicity and analyst forecast, and making empirical tests based on the data of listed companies from 2007 to 2012 which before and after the implementation of XBRL. The main research contents and conclusions are as follows：
Firstly, XBRL financial report is a useful supplement of traditional format of financial report at this stage. However, from the view of signal transfer, the listed companies provide both PDF and XBRL format of financial report, send more signals, or increase the signal transmission mode. From the view of information screening, although at release time,the XBRL and traditional format financial report cannot reflect the timeliness and relevance and other advantages, but in the search for information, processing information and production information, investors can effectively complete information discriminating process.
Secondly, XBRL financial report standardized the information disclosure format. It can effectively reduce investors’ information processing cost and improve the efficiency of information processing, and accelerate the firm specific information incorporated into the prices of assets, thereby reducing the synchronization of stock price fl uctuation.This book firstly tests the changes in stock price synchronicity before and after XBRL financial report’s implement of A-share listed companies in China, and bases on the difference of SSE and SZSE’s XBRL financial report’s implementing form and scope of implementation, the book tests the implementation effect of listed companies in SSE and SZSE from the horizontal angle. Through 8436 Sample Firms’ empirical test in 2007-2012 in China, the implementation of XBRL financial report can effectively reduce the stock price synchronicity. SSE and SZSE have difference in implementation of XBRL financial reporting form, but at effect of reduced price synchronization, there was no significant difference. The SSE XBRL platform shows abundant information including the foot-notes to financial statements. There are much more firm specific informations for inverters to excavate. While SZSE’ design is much more closer to the user, and provides a horizontal comparison and vertical comparison function, finally shows the better webpage presentation and total disclosure quality.
Thirdly, the listed companies’ periodic financial reports are important public information sources for analysts. The quality of financial report will directly affect the forecast behavior of securities analyst. Using XBRL financial report, securities analyst will greatly reduce the cost of their data collection, and improve the using degree and mining depth of financial reports, and then improve the efficiency and quality of the earnings forecast. The book theoretically analyzes the effects of securities analysts’ forecast by implement XBRL financial report, and then make empirical test from the forecast efficiency and quality. The analyst forecast efficiency tests the impact of the implementation of XBRL financial reporting on the number of listed companies’ research report, tracking analyst number, forecast update efficiency and the number of forecasting items in analyst research reports; the forecast quality examined the affection to analysts’ earnings forecasts dispersion and forecast precision.The results show that after the implementation of XBRL financial report by SSE and SZSE, both the number of forecast and analysts tracking number were increased markedly; for forecast efficiency, the frequency of listed companies being forecasted and the number of forecasting items in research report are also increased significantly; for forecast quality,after the implementation of XBRL, the analyst forecast’s divergence significantly reduced but the accuracy improved. Institutional investors play a more and more important role in the capital market; companies with higher institutional ownership can attract more analysts following and forecasts, by contrast the attention of companies with lower institutional ownership is obviously insufficient. After the implementation of XBRL financial report, the listed company with lower institutional ownership has more space to improve their efficiency of analyst following and forecast.
The academic contributions of this book are mainly reflected in the following three aspects：
Firstly, the mail line based on XBRL and information efficiency in theoretically, combined with asymmetric information theory, efficient market hypothesis and other theories analyze the effect of XBRL on various elements of information chain, it derived XBRL affect stock price synchronicity and analyst following and forecast by improve information efficiency.
Secondly, studied the implementation effect of XBRL securities market from the stock price synchronicity in China, which is the main research point of the efficiency of information on the international research. This book not only longitudinally tests the changes before and after the implementation of XBRL financial report in Chinese A-share listed companies, but also horizontally tests the differences between SSE and SZSE’s implementation of XBRL financial report.
Thirdly, the book studies the implementation effect of XBRL financial report from analysts’ forecast. Scholars of the world often research the in fl uence factors of analysts’ forecast behavior from analyst numbers,and forecasts dispersion and forecast accuracy. Forecast dispersion and forecast accuracy belongs to the forecast quality category, few articles have researched the efficiency of analysts’ forecast, and this research fills the blank.
The number of forecast reports and tracking analyst number cannot effectively measure the forecast efficiency; increased supply of the analyst can also achieve this effect. The innovation of this book is not only a study of the impact on analysts forecast update frequency from the analysts’ report number level, but also a study of the impact on the number of forecasting items from the research content level. Combined with these two levels, we can effectively measure the efficiency of analysts’forecast.