Research on the accounting quality of public listed companies at the Budapest Stock Exchange

Abstract

The operation of a financial reporting system is very expensive. In all areas where costs arise, it is important to examine whether the benefits exceed the costs or not. The objectives of financial reporting in Hungary are specified by Act C of 2000 on Accounting (HLA). In this paper, we will show these objectives and the defined accounting principles, as well. With the help of previous research, we have reviewed how accounting quality is measured. The aim of this research is to examine the difference in accounting quality between the publicly listed and private companies in Hungary and develop an evaluation process that takes due account of the complexity of the topic. To this end, we studied the separate (non-consolidated) financial statements of 63 Hungarian com- panies during the period of 1998-2016. Forty-seven percent of the statements were disclosed by public companies and fifty-three percent were disclosed by private companies. The examined financial statements were prepared in accordance with the HLA. To evaluate the data, we examined accruals, timely loss recognition, the vola- tility of earnings, cash flow and earnings management towards target. To summarize the results, we developed an evaluation model which is based on the basic accounting principles and the above-mentioned methods. We found that publicly listed companies have higher accounting quality compared to private companies.