경영자 능력이 보수주의에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

This study examines the association between managerial ability and accounting conservatism. Prior literature reports that conservatism is one of the mechanisms that lower the risk of investors by reducing information asymmetry between managers and investors (Basu 1997; Watts 2003a b; Ball and Shivakumar 2005; LaFond and Roychowdhury 2008). Although prior studies show that manager-specific characteristics are related to the quality of accounting information (e.g., Schrand and Zechman 2012; Ahmed and Duellman 2013; Demerjian et al. 2013), no prior study shows how managers’ ability interacts with accounting conservatism. One the one hand, managers with high abilities are more likely to be conservative in order to maintain the high level of reputation by constraining opportunistic accounting choices. On the other hand, highly able managers have more knowledge about the firm and the industry so that they tend to incorporate more forward-looking, positive information in reporting their performance. Although managerial ability is one of important factors that affect accounting information, prior literature does not examine the effect of managerial ability on accounting conservatism. This paper fills this void. We measure managerial ability using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) following Demerjian et al.(2012) and accounting conservatism is measured by using the method by LaFond and Roychowdhury(2008), and Ball and Shivakumar(2005). Using those measures, we examines the effect of managerial ability on accounting conservatism and whether the level of leverage mitigates or intensifies the association between managerial ability and conservatism.