Investigating of Asymmetric Timelines of Earning Due to Conservatism and Cost Stickiness

Abstract

Conditional conservatism is tendency to count for high degree of verification to recognize good news as gains than bad news as losses, and is called as asymmetric timeliness of earnings. But this asymmetry can also be resulted from other phenomenon which is called Costs stickiness. Costs are sticky, since they increase when sales increase and they decrease, but less, when sales decrease. If both the phenomena coexist and the effect of costs stickiness in estimating the conservatism be ignored, the conservatism will be over-estimated. This study examines the asymmetric timeliness of earnings from conservatism and cost stickiness. The survey results are based on 580 companies listed in the Tehran Stock exchange for a period of 10 years from 2001 to 2010. According to the results of this research, both phenomena coexist, and if the effect of cost stickiness in the estimation of conditional conservatism be ignored, the conservatism will be shown over-estimated.

Keywords

• conservatism
• asymmetric timeliness of earnings
• stickiness of costs