IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v51y2005i5p786-801.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Conservative Accounting Choices

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Bagnoli

    (Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907)

  • Susan G. Watts

    (Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907)

Abstract

Managers have sufficient discretion under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to adopt more or less conservative financial reporting policies. In this paper, we develop a signaling model to provide insight into managers' decisions to be conservative in their accounting. We provide conditions under which the market can use the manager's exercise of discretion to infer her private information about the future prospects of the firm and thus firm value. Under these conditions, we also show that there are meaningful differences between earnings response coefficients for firms whose managers choose a conservative reporting policy and those whose managers do not. Finally, we use our theoretical model to provide intuition for some established empirical results on earnings response coefficients.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Bagnoli & Susan G. Watts, 2005. "Conservative Accounting Choices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(5), pages 786-801, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:51:y:2005:i:5:p:786-801
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1040.0351
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1040.0351
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.1040.0351?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reichelstein, S, 2000. "Providing managerial incentives: Cash flows versus accrual accounting," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 243-269.
    2. Alfred Wagenhofer, 2003. "Accrual-based compensation, depreciation and investment decisions," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 287-309.
    3. Lawrence D. Brown, 2001. "A Temporal Analysis of Earnings Surprises: Profits versus Losses," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 221-241, September.
    4. Devine, Ct, 1963. "The Rule Of Conservatism Reexamined," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(2), pages 127-138.
    5. Lambert, Richard A., 2001. "Contracting theory and accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 3-87, December.
    6. Degeorge, Francois & Patel, Jayendu & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1999. "Earnings Management to Exceed Thresholds," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-33, January.
    7. Basu, Sudipta, 1997. "The conservatism principle and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 3-37, December.
    8. Sunil Dutta & Xiao‐jun Zhang, 2002. "Revenue Recognition in a Multiperiod Agency Setting," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 67-83, March.
    9. Zhang, Xiao-Jun, 2000. "Conservative accounting and equity valuation," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 125-149, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tim Baldenius & Stefan Reichelstein, 2005. "Incentives for Efficient Inventory Management: The Role of Historical Cost," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(7), pages 1032-1045, July.
    2. Sunil Dutta & Stefan Reichelstein, 2003. "Leading Indicator Variables, Performance Measurement, and Long‐Term Versus Short‐Term Contracts," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(5), pages 837-866, December.
    3. Anton Miglo, 2009. "Earnings‐Based Compensation Contracts Under Asymmetric Information," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 77(2), pages 225-243, March.
    4. Habib, Ahsan & Hossain, Mahmud, 2008. "Do managers manage earnings to ‘just meet or beat’ analyst forecasts?," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 79-91.
    5. Pierre Thijssen, Maximiliaan Willem & Iatridis, George Emmanuel, 2016. "Conditional conservatism and value relevance of financial reporting: A study in view of converging accounting standards," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 37, pages 48-70.
    6. Scott B. Jackson & Xiaotao (Kelvin) Liu, 2010. "The Allowance for Uncollectible Accounts, Conservatism, and Earnings Management," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 565-601, June.
    7. Penman, Stephen & Zhang, Xiao-Jun, 2020. "A theoretical analysis connecting conservative accounting to the cost of capital," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1).
    8. Wolfgang Schultze & Andreas Weiler, 2007. "Performancemessung und Wertgenerierung: Entlohnung auf Basis des Residualen Ökonomischen Gewinns," Metrika: International Journal for Theoretical and Applied Statistics, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 133-159, August.
    9. Beyer, Anne & Cohen, Daniel A. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Walther, Beverly R., 2010. "The financial reporting environment: Review of the recent literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 296-343, December.
    10. Christian Gaber, 2005. "Bewertung von Fertigerzeugnissen zu Volloder Teilkosten? Ansatz von Forderungen zum Nennwert oder Barwert?," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 325-352, June.
    11. Edith Leung & David Veenman, 2018. "Non‐GAAP Earnings Disclosure in Loss Firms," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 1083-1137, September.
    12. Lindblom, Ted & Sjögren, Stefan, 2009. "Increasing goal congruence in project evaluation by introducing a strict market depreciation schedule," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 519-532, October.
    13. Christian Hofmann, 2005. "Gestaltung von Erfolgsrechnungen zur Steuerung langfristiger Projekte," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 57(8), pages 689-716, December.
    14. Chen, Long & Krishnan, Gopal V. & Yu, Wei, 2018. "The relation between audit fee cuts during the global financial crisis and earnings quality and audit quality," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 14-31.
    15. Roychowdhury, Sugata & Shroff, Nemit & Verdi, Rodrigo S., 2019. "The effects of financial reporting and disclosure on corporate investment: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2).
    16. Iatridis, George Emmanuel, 2016. "Financial reporting language in financial statements: Does pessimism restrict the potential for managerial opportunism?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-17.
    17. Christensen, Peter O. & Feltham, Gerald A. & Sabac, Florin, 2005. "A contracting perspective on earnings quality," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 265-294, June.
    18. Abhijit Barua & Joseph Legoria & Jacquelyn Sue Moffitt, 2006. "Accruals Management to Achieve Earnings Benchmarks: A Comparison of Pre‐managed Profit and Loss Firms," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(5‐6), pages 653-670, June.
    19. Ludovic Vigneron & Yves Mard, 2016. "Earnings management across publicly traded and privately held French SMEs," International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 29(3), pages 416-440.
    20. Engel, Ellen & Hayes, Rachel M. & Wang, Xue, 2003. "CEO turnover and properties of accounting information," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1-3), pages 197-226, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:51:y:2005:i:5:p:786-801. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.