Accruals and volatility in a real options-based investment approach: evidence from Thai market

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between year-ahead net working capital accruals as a proxy of investment behavior and expected volatility during the period of 2009 to 2018 of listed non-financial firms in Thailand. I apply a real options-based investment framework to view accruals as a result of investment decision and investigate the impact of firm’s expected volatility.

The results show that firms with higher expected volatility have lower level of year-ahead accruals which is consistent with Grenadier and Malenko (2010). Moreover, this study also indicates that high expected volatility period induces distressed firms to invest because they have opportunity to receive a higher return which is consistent with Eisdorfer (2008). In addition, long operating cycle firms prefer to delay their investment during high expected volatility period because they have more possible investment outcomes which is consistent with Arif et al. (2016).

Overall, these results suggest that expected volatility has a pervasive effect to investment decision-making of the firms which is considered as the recognition of accruals.