회계 보수성이 미래 주가폭락위험에 미치는 영향: 재무제표 비교가능성과 정보불균형의 효과를 중심으로

In this paper, we hypothesize and test the association between accounting conservatism and subsequent stock price crash risk. Furthermore, we examine the moderating effect of financial statements comparability and information asymmetry in corporate environment on the relation between accounting conservatism and future crash risk. Traditional views on accounting conservatism literature argue that conservatism is a general accounting principles that make stricter verification to revenue recognition than losses (Basu 1997). This classic view of accounting conservatism is attributed to the use of financial statements in debt contracts. For example, accounting conservatism benefits creditors thus reduces cost of debt (Zhang 2008). However, recent several papers find the role of accounting conservatism in the stock market. For instance, Francis et al.(2013) document a positive and significant relation between conservatism and firm stock performance during the current crisis. They interpret these evidences that conservative accounting positively affects shareholder value. Also, Balakrishnan et al. (2016) use the similar setting. They find that firms with less conservative financial reporting experienced a decline in investment activity during the global financial crisis. All these evidences show that not only the creditors but also the market participants in the stock market consider firms’conservative accounting information. By extending studies mentioned above we expect the negative relation between accounting conservatism and future stock price crash risk. Prior research suggests several evidences for the expectation. First, accounting conservatism prevents the delay of losses. Typically, managers have incentives to withhold bad news (Kothari et al. 2009). If conservative accounting reduces such tendency, thereby decreases the risk of accounting bad news, which will avoid possible stock price crash risk in the future (Kim et al. 2016). Secondly, accounting conservatism mitigates conflict between shareholders and debtholders (Ahmed et al. 2002). Also, it enhances corporate decisions. For example, Lara et al. (2016) insist that more conservative firms invest more in settings prone to underinvestment and are associated with reduced overinvestment. Since the failure of corporate investment leads to the decline in stock price, increased efficient investment would prevent crash risk. Based on these prior evidences, we expect a negative relation between accounting conservatism and stock price crash risk. By using 9,026 listed firm-years in Korean stock market from year 2002 to year 2014, we find a mixed association between accounting conservatism and subsequent crash risk. We find no significant relation between the two when we use Basu (1997)’s return-earnings model to proxy accounting conservatism. However, there is a significant and negative relation when we use Ball and Shivakumar(2005, 2006) measure to proxy accounting conservatism. Furthermore, we find that the relation between accounting conservatism and crash risk is significantly negative in the sub-samples of higher financial statements comparability compared to that of lower comparability. This result is even stronger in the sub-samples of higher information asymmetry. We interpret the results that investors’ understanding of conservative financial information increases, which also enhance the efficiency of their investment decisions. Relationship between accounting conservatism and future stock price crash risk is significant for sub-samples with higher demand for conservative accounting. Financial statements comparability and information asymmetry explain the former and the latter, respectively. Our results remain consistent when we use the different proxies of crash risk. Our study contributes to the literature in the following ways. First, we extend the growing studies on the link between conservative accounting and stock market. By showing the accounting conservatism reduces stock price crash risk in certain circumstance, our paper provide insight to the following studies. Second, our work complements the literature on financial statement comparability. Because of the difficulty in measuring comparability, related studies have not cumulated the evidences of the role of financial statement comparability yet. This adds an empirical evidence to this growing literature by showing the moderating effect of comparability on relation between accounting conservatism and crash risk. Finally, we provide practical suggestions to the regulators. For example, Korean stock market does not discriminate conservative accounting until the firms enhance financial statements comparability. Thus, stock market policies might consider the moderating effects among the financial information qualities.