Um estudo empírico sobre o Conservadorismo Contábil no período 1995 / 2010

Abstract

The increasing complexity of operations and the size of organizations, observing the economy and the stock market s strengthening, have motivated a considerable expansion of the relevance of information generated by Accounting. However, lots have been discussed about the true value of accounting information to its various stakeholders. This discussion, often based on the reliability of financial statements related to the real economic scenario of the companies. One of the major criticisms on Accounting is to be conservative in relation to standards used to determining the economic outcome. Consequently their information does not reflect the economic reality of business. Add to this the fact that Accounting has been incorporating new standards that would make it even more conservative over the years. This issue has extreme relevance as it brings up the question of comparability of financial statements over the years. This research used a sample of 106 publicly traded companies at BM&FBOVESPA to measure the conservatism, based on Accumulation Accruals models proposed by Givoly and Hayn (2000), and Opportunity Asymmetric Profit models proposed by Basu (1997), concluding by the acceptance of the hypothesis that there is an increased conservatism reported in financial statements over the analyzed period between 1995 and 2010.