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Journal of Accounting and Economics Vol. 56 No. 2-3 2013

Non-discretionary conservatism: Evidence and implications

Alastair Lawrence1; Richard G. Sloan1; Yuan Sun2

1 University of California, Berkeley · 2 Boston University

Abstract

A large body of accounting research finds that various contracting incentives lead managers to engage in conservative accounting practices. We extend existing research by modeling the impact of extant accounting rules on conservative accounting. Accounting rules typically require assets to be written down when their fair values drop sufficiently below their book values. We document evidence of the resulting non-discretionary conservatism and show that it appears to explain some of the results from previous research on contracting incentives.

DOI
10.1016/j.jacceco.2013.10.005
Volume
56
Issue
2-3
Pages
112-133
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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