The Benefits of Conservative Accounting to Shareholders: Evidence from the Financial Crisis
利用金融危机作为自然实验，研究发现会计保守主义与公司股票表现正相关，且在公司治理较弱或信息不对称较高时更显著，表明保守会计能降低信息风险、控制代理问题，从而提升股东价值。
SYNOPSIS Using the recent financial crisis as a natural quasi-experiment we test whether, and to what extent, conservative accounting affects shareholder value. We find that there is a significantly positive and economically meaningful relation between conservatism and firm stock performance during the current crisis. The result holds for alternative measures of conservatism and is validated in a series of robustness checks. We further find that the relation between conservatism and firm value is more pronounced for firms with weaker corporate governance or higher information asymmetry. Overall, our paper complements LaFond and Watts (2008) by providing empirical evidence to their argument that conservatism is an efficient governance mechanism to mitigate information risk and control for agency problems, and that shareholders benefit from it. JEL Classifications: M41; M48; G01.