On the Informational Role of Delayed Good News: A Firm-Level Crash Risk Evidence from Egypt

Abstract

There is controversy regarding the impact of delayed good news and information asymmetry in financial reporting on firm-level crash risk. In the current exposure draft on the conceptual framework of financial reporting, information asymmetry is not considered a desired characteristic. We presented a framework for the demand for conservatism to mitigate information asymmetry and thus, decreasing the potential exposure to firm-level crash risk. Kim and Zhang (2010) claimed and provided evidence that conservatism is incrementally significant as a proxy of information asymmetry for predicting firm-level crash risk. If that claim is true, however, it will be sensible to argue that information asymmetry is non-trivial for firm-level crash risk assessment. Toward that end, this study directly tests if the timeliness of good news is trivial for firm-level crash risk assessment by specifying the firm-level crash risk in terms of a conservatism model. The study employed sample data from Egypt's capital market, which defines a setting dominated lately by firm-level crashes. We found evidence that timeliness of good news versus bad news explained by information asymmetry is significantly increasing the probabilities of experiencing firm-level crash risk; however, we found that conservatism reduces information asymmetry which eventually reduces the potential exposure to firm-level crash risk.