Consequences of Financial Reporting Requirements on Managerial Decisions: The Case of U.S. Multinational Corporations and Foreign Currency Translation

This article reports the results of tests used to detect shifts in the systematic risk of multinational corporations concurrent with regulations mandating new financial reporting requirements for foreign currency translations. Results indicate significant beta shifts, suggesting that management undertook specific suboptimal actions to counteract the effects of the regulations and that those actions were responded to by the marketplace in the form of a reassessment of systematic risk. It is further indicated that the market reaction varies according to both the location and magnitude of firms' foreign investments.