Examining Effects of Conditional and Unconditional Conservatism on Financial Reporting Quality

Abstract

In this study, the impact of conditional and unconditional accounting conservatism on the quality of financial reporting was examined, and accruals quality, earnings persistence and disclosure quality was used as financial reporting quality proxies. To measure conditional conservatism, the Basu model (1997) was used, and to measure unconditional conservatism, the measure introduced by Ball and et.al. (2006) according to the Basu model (2006) was used. The statistical population in this research consisted of a sample of 98 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2003 to 2014. The data analysis and hypotheses testing in this research were implemented by multivariate regression model. The results of hypotheses testing showed that conditional conservatism increases the quality of accruals and persistence of earnings, but has no significant effect on the quality of disclosure, and that unconditional conservatism has no significant effect on accruals quality and disclosure quality, but increases earnings persistence.

Keywords

• conditional conservatism
• unconditional conservatism
• financial reporting quality