보수성의 변화가 회계정보의 가치관련성에 미치는 영향 -외환위기 전후기간을 중심으로-

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of changes in conservatism on value relevance of accounting information around the 1997 financial crisis. Also, this study investigates whether the conservatism and the value relevance of accounting information have a certain direction by using the 199 firms listed for 16 consecutive years from 1988 to 2003. We find no definitive trends on the conservatism and the value relevance of accounting information over the past 16 years. The conservatism notably increased in 1997 and 1998, and its upward trend no longer lasted thereafter. We could not find any significant change in the explanatory power of accounting information as a whole. For individual accounting numbers, the coefficient of net assets shows a downward trend, while the coefficient of net incomes shows an upward trend after 1997. The empirical findings suggest that the increased conservatism in 1997 and 1998 made accounting information less value-relevant. Specifically, for firms in which the conservatism in accounting increased after 1996, the value relevance of accounting information declined. However, the accounting information of firms with no change in the conservative accounting during the 1997-1998 period shows a significantly higher value relevance.