aAssociate Professor(PhD), Shahid Beheshti University, Faculty of Management and Accounting, Iran
bPhD student of Finance, Shahid Beheshti University, Faculty of Management and Accounting, Iran
cFaculty Member of Accounting Department, PNU
dPhD student of Accounting, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Faculty of Management and Accounting, Iran
Online published on 15 April, 2014.
We examine the relation between stock return, financial distress and leverage, and on the other hand the relation of distress risk and accruals to find out how distress risk and these variables are affected each others. Our findings suggest that returns are negatively related to financial distress intensity and leverage. These are puzzles under capital markets assumptions but are consistent with optimizing firms that differ in their exposure to financial distress costs. Also, we find a negative relation between accruals and distress risk. Past accruals anomaly studies have documented results that suggest that distress risk increases systematically across decreasing accruals portfolios.
Financial distress, stock returns, leverage, accruals
