{"title":"Do Family Firms Choose Conservative Accounting Practices?","authors":"Mehul Raithatha, T. Shaw","doi":"10.1142/s1094406019500148","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We investigate whether family firms are motivated to adopt conservative accounting practices, given their unique characteristics of high promoter holdings, less diversified equity, and long-term interest in the business. We examine whether heterogeneity within family firms, captured through family members’ involvement in management and the firm’s affiliation to a business group, drives conservative behavior. We test our model on a sample of 2534 listed Indian firms from 2006 to 2015. Our results indicate that family-controlled firms are more conditionally conservative in their accounting practices, especially when family members manage them and when they are affiliated with a business group. These findings are robust to alternative measures of conservatism and also after controlling for omitted variable bias and reverse causality.","PeriodicalId":47122,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Accounting","volume":"54 1","pages":"1950014"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1142/s1094406019500148","citationCount":"8","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Accounting","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s1094406019500148","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 8
Abstract
We investigate whether family firms are motivated to adopt conservative accounting practices, given their unique characteristics of high promoter holdings, less diversified equity, and long-term interest in the business. We examine whether heterogeneity within family firms, captured through family members’ involvement in management and the firm’s affiliation to a business group, drives conservative behavior. We test our model on a sample of 2534 listed Indian firms from 2006 to 2015. Our results indicate that family-controlled firms are more conditionally conservative in their accounting practices, especially when family members manage them and when they are affiliated with a business group. These findings are robust to alternative measures of conservatism and also after controlling for omitted variable bias and reverse causality.
期刊介绍:
The aim of The International Journal of Accounting is to advance the academic and professional understanding of accounting theory, policies and practice from the international perspective and viewpoint. The Journal editorial recognizes that international accounting is influenced by a variety of forces, e.g., governmental, political and economic. Thus, the primary criterion for manuscript evaluation is the incremental contribution to international accounting literature and the forces that impact the field. The Journal aims at understanding the present and potential ability of accounting to aid in analyzing and interpreting international economic transactions and the economic consequences of such reporting. These transactions may be within a profit or non-profit environment. The Journal encourages a broad view of the origins and development of accounting with an emphasis on its functions in an increasingly interdependent global economy. The Journal also welcomes manuscripts that help explain current international accounting practices, with related theoretical justifications, and identify criticisms of current policies and practice. Other than occasional commissioned papers or special issues, all the manuscripts published in the Journal are selected by the editors after the normal double-blind refereeing process.