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The negative impact of R&D capitalization: a valuerelevance approach

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Jeanjean

    (GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Anne Cazavan-Jeny

Abstract

Accounting for R&D costs is an open issue. SFAS N°2 mandates that all R&D costs must be immediately expensed. IAS 38 requires capitalization of R&D costs if they meet certain criteria. Recent research papers (Healy et al., 2002; Lev and Sougiannis, 1996; Zhao, 2002; Callimaci and Landry, 2004) show the value relevance of capitalized R&D. We test the value relevance of R&D reporting in a sample of 197 French firms between 1993 and 2002. The French context provides an interesting field for R&D value relevance studies because both accounting treatments of R&D costs (expensing and capitalization) are allowed. Unlike previous studies, we find that capitalized R&D is negatively associated with stock prices and returns. This negative coefficient on capitalized R&D implies that investors are concerned with and react negatively to capitalization of R&D. We also find that the firms choosing to capitalize (successful) R&D are smaller, more highly-leveraged, less profitable and have less growth opportunities. Taking into account these characteristics, our robustness checks confirm that capitalized R&D is not associated with higher prices and is related to lower returns

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Jeanjean & Anne Cazavan-Jeny, 2006. "The negative impact of R&D capitalization: a valuerelevance approach," Post-Print halshs-00009851, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00009851
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