Accounting Conservatism (accounting + conservatism)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Accounting Conservatism and the Temporal Trends in Current Earnings' Ability to Predict Future Cash Flows versus Future Earnings: Evidence on the Trade-off between Relevance and Reliability

CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 2 2010
SATI P. BANDYOPADHYAY
M41; C23; D21; G38 This research reports that an increasing level of accounting conservatism over the 1973,2005 period is associated with: (1) an increase in the ability of current earnings to predict future cash flows and (2) a decrease in the ability of current earnings to predict future earnings. We also find that usefulness of earnings for explaining stock prices over book values is positively related to reliability but not to relevance. Our results hold for the constant and full samples in both in-sample and out-of-sample analyses and are robust to the use of alternative measures for relevance, reliability, earnings usefulness, and conservatism. Our findings about the relations among conservatism, relevance, reliability, and usefulness suggest a trade-off between relevance and reliability and seem to indicate that the adoption of an increasing number of conservative accounting standards has a possible adverse impact on earnings usefulness through a negative effect on reliability. [source]


Debt Covenants and Accounting Conservatism

JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 1 2010
VALERI V. NIKOLAEV
ABSTRACT Using a sample of over 5,000 debt issues, I test whether firms with more extensive use of covenants in their public debt contracts exhibit timelier recognition of economic losses in accounting earnings. Covenants govern the transfer of decision-making and control rights from shareholders to bondholders when a company approaches financial distress and thereby limit managers' abilities to expropriate bondholder wealth. Covenants are expected to constrain managerial opportunism, however, only if the accounting system recognizes economic losses in earnings in a timely fashion. Thus, the demand for timely loss recognition should increase with a contract's reliance on covenants. Consistent with this conjecture, I find evidence that reliance on covenants in public debt contracts is positively associated with the degree of timely loss recognition. I also find evidence that the presence of prior private debt mitigates this relationship. [source]


Managerial Ownership and Accounting Conservatism in Japan: A Test of Management Entrenchment Effect

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 7-8 2010
Akinobu Shuto
Abstract:, We examine the effect of managerial ownership on the demand for accounting conservatism in Japan. We find that within the low and high levels of managerial ownership, managerial ownership is significantly negatively related to the asymmetric timeliness of earnings, which is consistent with the implication of the incentive alignment effect. We also find a significant positive relationship between managerial ownership and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings for the intermediate levels of managerial ownership, as suggested by the management entrenchment effect. These evidences suggest the possibility that accounting conservatism contributes to addressing the agency problem between managers and shareholders. [source]


Accounting Conservatism and Transitory Earnings in Value and Growth Strategies

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 5-6 2010
Mattias Hamberg
Abstract:, The value premium earned on value and growth investment strategies increases after adjusting for transitory earnings and for the accounting conservatism bias in the book value of equity. Simple investment strategies based on earnings-to-price (E/P) and book-to-market (B/M) performed on the Swedish stock market between 1980 and 2004 generate an annual value premium of 11 to 14%. Adjustments for transitory earnings and for the conservatism bias increase the value premium by 2 to 4 percentage points, and at the same time they improve the consistency of earning it. These results suggest that transitory earnings and accounting conservatism introduce noise into E/P and B/M measures. Adjusting for these accounting characteristics makes the identification based on E/P and B/M more effective. [source]


Association Between Accounting Conservatism and Analysts' Forecast Inefficiency,

ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2010
Jinhan Pae
M41 Abstract We find that analysts' earnings forecasts do not fully impound the implications of accounting conservatism. Forecast optimism is negatively associated with the magnitude of beginning-of-year balance sheet reserves (BSR), which are associated with conservative accounting in prior years. However, this result vanishes once we allow for the negative association, documented in several prior studies, between BSR and Basu's asymmetric timeliness measure of conservatism [Journal of Accounting and Economics 24 (1997) 3]. After controlling for this association, we find that forecasters' under-reaction to bad versus good news is negatively associated with the magnitude of BSR. We obtain similar results after allowing for the positive association between asymmetric timeliness and Khan and Watts' C_Score [Journal of Accounting and Economics 48 (2009) 132]. Therefore, our results are consistent with a subtle form of inefficiency of forecasts with respect to accounting conservatism; that is, analysts do not fully appreciate that the earnings of companies with lower BSR or higher C_Scores are likely to be both: (i) lower relative to forecast; and (ii) more asymmetrically timely than the earnings of companies exhibiting higher BSR or lower C_Scores. [source]


Conservatism and Cross-Sectional Variation in the Post,Earnings Announcement Drift

JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 4 2006
GANAPATHI NARAYANAMOORTHY
ABSTRACT Accounting conservatism allows me to identify a previously undocumented source of predictable cross-sectional variation in Standardized Unexpected Earnings' autocorrelations viz. the sign of the most recent earnings realization and present evidence that the market ignores this variation ("loss effect"). It is possible to earn returns higher than from the Bernard and Thomas (1990) strategy by incorporating this feature. Additionally, the paper shows that the "loss effect" is different from the "cross quarter" effect shown by Rangan and Sloan (1998) and it is possible to combine the two effects to earn returns higher than either strategy alone. Thus, the paper corroborates the Bernard and Thomas finding that stock prices fail to reflect the extent to which quarterly earnings series differ from a seasonal random walk and extends it by showing that the market systematically underestimates time-series properties resulting from accounting conservatism. [source]


Accounting Conservatism and the Temporal Trends in Current Earnings' Ability to Predict Future Cash Flows versus Future Earnings: Evidence on the Trade-off between Relevance and Reliability

CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 2 2010
SATI P. BANDYOPADHYAY
M41; C23; D21; G38 This research reports that an increasing level of accounting conservatism over the 1973,2005 period is associated with: (1) an increase in the ability of current earnings to predict future cash flows and (2) a decrease in the ability of current earnings to predict future earnings. We also find that usefulness of earnings for explaining stock prices over book values is positively related to reliability but not to relevance. Our results hold for the constant and full samples in both in-sample and out-of-sample analyses and are robust to the use of alternative measures for relevance, reliability, earnings usefulness, and conservatism. Our findings about the relations among conservatism, relevance, reliability, and usefulness suggest a trade-off between relevance and reliability and seem to indicate that the adoption of an increasing number of conservative accounting standards has a possible adverse impact on earnings usefulness through a negative effect on reliability. [source]


Does accounting conservatism pay?

ACCOUNTING & FINANCE, Issue 1 2010
Raghavan J. Iyengar
C21; J33; M41 Abstract We investigate whether or not there is a link between conservative accounting practices and the sensitivity of executive pay to accounting performance. Using several accrual-based measures of accounting conservatism as well as alternative measures of accounting performance, we estimate an econometric model of CEO compensation that incorporates the interaction of accounting conservatism and accounting performance. Consistent with optimal contracting theory, we find that the sensitivity of executive pay to accounting performance is higher for firms that report conservative accounting earnings. These results support the hypothesis that accounting conservatism, by limiting earnings management opportunities and improving the reliability of accounting performance measures, allows firms to formulate contracts that tie executive compensation more closely to accounting performance. [source]


Conservatism and Cross-Sectional Variation in the Post,Earnings Announcement Drift

JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 4 2006
GANAPATHI NARAYANAMOORTHY
ABSTRACT Accounting conservatism allows me to identify a previously undocumented source of predictable cross-sectional variation in Standardized Unexpected Earnings' autocorrelations viz. the sign of the most recent earnings realization and present evidence that the market ignores this variation ("loss effect"). It is possible to earn returns higher than from the Bernard and Thomas (1990) strategy by incorporating this feature. Additionally, the paper shows that the "loss effect" is different from the "cross quarter" effect shown by Rangan and Sloan (1998) and it is possible to combine the two effects to earn returns higher than either strategy alone. Thus, the paper corroborates the Bernard and Thomas finding that stock prices fail to reflect the extent to which quarterly earnings series differ from a seasonal random walk and extends it by showing that the market systematically underestimates time-series properties resulting from accounting conservatism. [source]


Managerial Ownership and Accounting Conservatism in Japan: A Test of Management Entrenchment Effect

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 7-8 2010
Akinobu Shuto
Abstract:, We examine the effect of managerial ownership on the demand for accounting conservatism in Japan. We find that within the low and high levels of managerial ownership, managerial ownership is significantly negatively related to the asymmetric timeliness of earnings, which is consistent with the implication of the incentive alignment effect. We also find a significant positive relationship between managerial ownership and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings for the intermediate levels of managerial ownership, as suggested by the management entrenchment effect. These evidences suggest the possibility that accounting conservatism contributes to addressing the agency problem between managers and shareholders. [source]


Accounting Conservatism and Transitory Earnings in Value and Growth Strategies

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 5-6 2010
Mattias Hamberg
Abstract:, The value premium earned on value and growth investment strategies increases after adjusting for transitory earnings and for the accounting conservatism bias in the book value of equity. Simple investment strategies based on earnings-to-price (E/P) and book-to-market (B/M) performed on the Swedish stock market between 1980 and 2004 generate an annual value premium of 11 to 14%. Adjustments for transitory earnings and for the conservatism bias increase the value premium by 2 to 4 percentage points, and at the same time they improve the consistency of earning it. These results suggest that transitory earnings and accounting conservatism introduce noise into E/P and B/M measures. Adjusting for these accounting characteristics makes the identification based on E/P and B/M more effective. [source]


Association Between Accounting Conservatism and Analysts' Forecast Inefficiency,

ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2010
Jinhan Pae
M41 Abstract We find that analysts' earnings forecasts do not fully impound the implications of accounting conservatism. Forecast optimism is negatively associated with the magnitude of beginning-of-year balance sheet reserves (BSR), which are associated with conservative accounting in prior years. However, this result vanishes once we allow for the negative association, documented in several prior studies, between BSR and Basu's asymmetric timeliness measure of conservatism [Journal of Accounting and Economics 24 (1997) 3]. After controlling for this association, we find that forecasters' under-reaction to bad versus good news is negatively associated with the magnitude of BSR. We obtain similar results after allowing for the positive association between asymmetric timeliness and Khan and Watts' C_Score [Journal of Accounting and Economics 48 (2009) 132]. Therefore, our results are consistent with a subtle form of inefficiency of forecasts with respect to accounting conservatism; that is, analysts do not fully appreciate that the earnings of companies with lower BSR or higher C_Scores are likely to be both: (i) lower relative to forecast; and (ii) more asymmetrically timely than the earnings of companies exhibiting higher BSR or lower C_Scores. [source]