Essays on accounting conservatism: cross-country analyses and a literature review

• Ano de defesa: 2024
• Autor(a) principal: Santana Júnior, Jorge Luiz de
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Accounting conservatism; Conservadorismo contábil; Cultura nacional; Emissões subsequentes de ações; Instituições; Institutions; National culture; Seasoned equity offerings; Short-selling; Venda a descoberto
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/12/12136/tde-17122024-155816/

This thesis studies several aspects of accounting conservatism, its determinants, and its consequences from both an international and a single-country perspective. In Chapter 1, I review the current literature on accounting conservatism in Brazil, exploring the main findings and suggesting opportunities for future studies. I show that the literature is focused on the determinants of conditional conservatism and has not explored many aspects of unconditional conservatism and the consequences of both conditional and unconditional conservatism to financial reporting users. Besides, I find that several results found in the Brazilian context conflict with other countries results, suggesting that several explanations for accounting conservatism depends on country-level characteristics, which I explore in the other chapters. In Chapter 2, I investigate the consequences of accounting conservatism on the cost of equity capital through its effect on market reaction to Seasoned Equity Offerings. Moreover, I explore how this effect changes depending on country-level characteristics, such as culture and institutions. In Chapter 3, I study the role of a particular kind of investor, the short investor, in financial reporting. I find that conservatism is lower in countries where short-selling is illegal (restricted) in comparison with countries where short-selling is legal (unrestricted) and that both differences change according to enforcement. Our results are consistent with the notion that short-sellers play a governance role but that this role depends on institutional enforcement.