Accounting Conservatism and Stock Price Crash Risk : Firm-level Evidence

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

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Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)412-441
Journal / PublicationContemporary Accounting Research
Volume33
Issue number1
Online published17 Nov 2014
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2016

Abstract

Using a large sample of U.S. firms during 1964–2007, we find that conditional conservatism is associated with a lower likelihood of a firm's future stock price crashes. This finding holds for multiple measures of conditional conservatism and crash risk and is robust to controlling for other known determinants of crash risk and firm-fixed effects. Moreover, we find that the relation between conservatism and crash risk is more pronounced for firms with higher information asymmetry. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that conditional conservatism limits managers’ incentive and ability to overstate performance and hide bad news from investors, which, in turn, reduces stock price crash risk.