Degree Of Conditional Conservatism Research Articles

Conditional conservatism in GAAP earnings and the implications for the disclosure of non-GAAP earnings

We examine whether and how the degree of conditional conservatism in GAAP earnings influences managers' decisions to disclose non-GAAP earnings. Conditional conservatism imposes a downward bias and may negatively affect the information content of GAAP earnings. However, prior research documents that non-GAAP earnings exhibit higher persistence, predictive ability, and information content than GAAP earnings. Consequently, we argue that companies may disclose non-GAAP earnings to circumvent the constraints imposed by conditional conservatism. Our evidence is consistent with the existence of a positive association between the degree of conditional conservatism in GAAP earnings and the decision by firms to disclose non-GAAP earnings. We also document a positive association between the extent of conditional conservatism in GAAP earnings and both the magnitude of non-GAAP exclusions and frequency of non-GAAP disclosures.

Agressividade tributária como fator determinante do conservadorismo condicional no Brasil,

ABSTRACT This paper investigates whether the degree of tax aggressiveness is associated with conditional conservatism in Brazil. After a thorough literature review on accounting conservatism by Brazilian academia and a discussion about tax aggressiveness and accounting conservatism, a literature gap was found because the relationship between a firm's degree of tax aggressiveness and its conditional conservatism had not been investigated previously. Taxable income has a relationship with accounting income in the Brazilian corporate income tax system. Hence, tax planning can affect financial information properties. This study offers a partial explanation of accounting conservatism based on tax issues that contribute to the conservatism and taxation literature. The results suggest that tax strategies that aim to avoid tax burden are related to conditional conservative accounting. Hence, the practice of conditional conservatism in Brazil appears to be linked with tax-deductible alternatives of reducing earnings, which would explain tax planning’s association with the degree of conditional conservatism in financial reporting. This finding is relevant to financial reporting users that can consider our results in their analysis and to management that seeks to understand their decisions about tax planning better. For this research purpose, two Basu models (Basu, 1997) were adopted, adapted with tax-aggressiveness controls. The effective tax rate (ETR) was used as a tax-aggressiveness metric, controlling firms with both high and low ETR. The study period was from 2010 to 2019 for Brazilian firms from B3 S.A. - Brasil, Bolsa, Balcão (B3). The findings demonstrate a significant relationship between tax avoidance and conditional conservatism, that is, more tax-aggressive firms tend to use more conservative accounting.

New insights into IFRS and earnings quality: what conclusions to draw from the French experience?

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the effect of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on earnings quality in a continental European context (i.e. France) more than a decade after their mandatory adoption. Furthermore, the authors investigate whether the IFRS effect depends on firm-specific incentives.Design/methodology/approachThe authors construct an aggregated measure that considers the main qualitative information characteristics: reliability and relevance. They identify accruals quality, earnings smoothing and the degree of conditional conservatism as attributes of reliability and use earnings persistence, predictability, value relevance and timeliness to measure earnings relevance. To test the hypotheses, the authors use a sample of French listed companies. The analyses are based on ordinary least squares (OLS) fixed effects, the Newey–West estimator and the difference-in-difference approach. The authors also use cluster analysis to identify firms with high incentives for earnings quality.FindingsThe results reveal a decrease in earnings quality that persisted for a decade after IFRS adoption. This decrease is mainly due to a decline in earnings relevance, suggesting that the fair value principle worsened earnings volatility. However, the results show that there is an improvement in earnings reliability after IFRS adoption, suggesting that the international standards were able to constrain managerial opportunism. Additionally, the findings reveal that firm-specific incentives can enhance the positive effect of IFRS, but the incentives are not able to substitute for such effect.Research limitations/implicationsThe IFRS effect depends on firm-specific incentives.Practical implicationsThe authors prove that firm-specific incentives are important to accentuate the positive effect of IFRS on earnings reliability and to mitigate the impact of IFRS on earnings relevance.Originality/valueThis paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, it addresses the relative lack of attention to the main qualitative characteristics in measuring earnings quality, that is, earnings reliability and earning relevance, and uses an aggregate earnings quality measure. Second, this paper uses a cluster analysis to highlight the role of firm-specific incentives in shaping the effect of IFRS on earnings quality.

Conditional Conservatism, Regulation, and Insolvency Risk

We develop a new method of assessing conditional conservatism using more detailed data available from the insurance industry. We look at how conditional conservatism affects insolvency risk and the financial strength rating of property-liability (P&L) insurance companies. We also investigate how a change to accounting rules affects conditional conservatism. The P&L insurance industry is a perfect setting for studying accruals because we have specific and detailed firm-year level information about loss accrual development. The data enable us to develop a new method of measuring conditional conservatism, which is based on the concavity of the loss development curve. We study U.S. domiciled P&L insurance companies from 1995 to 2015. We find that the greater the degree of conditional conservatism, the lower is insolvency probability, and the better is the financial strength rating, with other things being constant. The result indicates that regulators and rating agencies reward insurers that voluntarily utilize conditional conservatism accounting strategy. Moreover, we find that the level of conditional conservatism is reduced after the enactment of the Model Audit Rule (MAR). MAR, like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 404, increased board oversight of internal risk management. Our result provides evidence that complying with additional disclosure requirements reduces P&L insurers’ incentives to use conditional conservatism to mitigate regulatory monitoring costs.

Has Financial Reporting Quality Converged Under IFRS? International Differences in Conditional Conservatism

Using a large sample of firms that report under mandatory IFRS from 51 countries, this study examines the association between conditional conservatism, institutional quality, and Big 4 audits. We hypothesize and find that the degree of conditional conservatism is higher in countries with better institutional quality. In contrast to popular belief, we provide evidence that Big 4 audits are not associated with the degree of conditional conservatism. Finally, we show that reporting differences between high and low institutional countries have not diminished over time. Thus, our findings suggest that the implementation of IFRS remains predictably uneven. These findings have implications for investors, standard-setting bodies, and corporate governance.

Identifying Conditional Conservatism in Financial Accounting Data: Theory and Evidence

ABSTRACTUsing a financial reporting and valuation model, we investigate the construct validity of Basu's (1997) asymmetric timeliness (AT) regression coefficient as a measure of conditional conservatism in corporate financial reporting. We predict that the AT coefficient will be positive even in the absence of conditional conservatism, and it will vary with non-accounting factors even if the degree of conditional conservatism is held constant. Our empirical analysis shows that AT coefficient estimates vary in directions predicted by our theory. Specifically, we find that AT coefficient estimates increase with expected returns and asymmetry in the distribution of returns, and decrease with cash flow persistence. Importantly, we identify the spread between the variances of bad news and good news accruals as an alternative measure of conditional conservatism that is free of the effects confounding the AT coefficient. Consistent with a key implication of conditional conservatism, we find that the variance of bad news accruals is significantly higher than the variance of good news accruals primarily due to conditionally conservative accruals related to inventory write-downs, long-term asset write-downs, and goodwill impairments. A series of placebo tests provides additional support for the construct validity of our alternative measure of conditional conservatism.Data Availability: Data are publicly available from the sources indicated in the text.

The IFRS Adoption Reform through the Lens of Neoinstitutionalism: The Case of the Russian Federation

This study examines the impact of IFRS adoption and concurrent regulatory reforms on the reporting quality of Russian public firms. Unlike much of the prior literature focusing on the economic and legal explanations of the IFRS adoption, we build on the neo-institutional theory of DiMaggio and Powell (1983, 1991). We show that changes in reporting quality, as measured by value relevance of information and the degree of conditional conservatism, are a function of the type of isomorphic pressure within a country. We find that firms that experienced coercive, mimetic, and normative societal pressures—those that both adopted IFRS and were affected by other regulatory reforms—experienced significant improvements in reporting quality. We do not find such evidence for firms that experienced only coercive pressure—those that were affected by changes in regulations but were exempt from the IFRS reporting requirement. Overall, the study sheds light on complexity of the interplay between external pressures and a wide array of internal pressures on public firms to adopt IFRS. Notably, the study's unique research settings allows us to achieve a better identification strategy, compared to prior IFRS studies that attempted to disentangle the IFRS adoption and regulations/enforcement effects. Our findings indicate that the incremental “IFRS adoption” effect on reporting quality was significantly positive, whereas the individual “regulations” effect was non-detectable.

Adoção das IFRS no Brasil: Efeitos no Conservadorismo Contábil

The objective in this study is to investigate the effect of the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the degree of conditional conservatism in the financial statements of companies listed on BM&FBOVESPA. Considering that the convergence process with the international standards aims for the standardization of accounting information disclosure and the enhancement of its quality, the goal was to investigate the quality standards of the accounting information in Brazilian companies after the adoption of the IFRS in the phases characterized by the period 2008, when accounting pronouncements (CPC) 1 to 14 were adopted, and as from 2010, when the adoption of the full IFRS became compulsory. Therefore, a sample of financial statements was used from 320 companies listed on BM&FBOVESPA between 2000 and 2012. As a proxy of information quality, the attribute Conservatism was used, as proposed by Basu (1997) and Ball and Shivakumar (2005). The results did not evidence changes in the degree of conservatism in the statements analyzed.

Asymmetric Timeliness Estimates of Conditional Conservatism: Separating Accounting from Economics

Using a financial reporting and valuation model, we investigate the construct validity of Basu’s (1997) asymmetric timeliness (AT) regression coefficient as a measure of conditional conservatism in corporate financial reporting. We predict that the AT coefficient will be positive even in the absence of conditional conservatism and it will vary with non-accounting factors even if the degree of conditional conservatism is held constant. Our empirical analysis shows that AT coefficient estimates vary in directions predicted by our theory. Specifically, we find that AT coefficient estimates increase with expected returns and asymmetry in the distribution of returns, and decrease with cash flow persistence. Importantly, we identify the spread between the variances of bad news and good news accruals as an alternative measure of conditional conservatism that is free of the effects confounding the AT coefficient. Consistent with a key implication of conditional conservatism, we find that the variance of bad news accruals is significantly higher than the variance of good news accruals primarily due to conditionally conservative accruals related to inventory write-downs, long-term asset write-downs, and goodwill impairments. A series of placebo tests provides additional support for the construct validity of our alternative measure of conditional conservatism.