Earning Persistence in Turkey: Evidence from Turkey’s Largest Industrial Enterprise

Abstract

The paper examines the persistence of earnings on Tupras during the period 1993-2014. Tupras is the largest industrial enterprise in Turkey. Following Resende (2006), a simple theoretical framework justifies an autoregressive formulation for excess earning. A strong form of persistence can then be related to the presence of a unit root. The results from ADF unit root tests obtained for two different measures of earnings (Value added and Earnings) excess profitability mostly favour the presence of a unit root. Therefore, despite an apparently more competitive environment in the Turkish economy one can still observe extremely persistent earnings.

Keywords: TUPRAS, Earnings Persistence, Accounting Quality.