خلاصة:
Review the literature of conservatism in financial reporting indicates the importance of conservatism in accounting profession. Researchers have always tried to determine the degree and ways of conservatism in financial reporting and accounting, although this is not done easily, because there is not a direct measure of conservatism. However, conservatism has been one of the key principles in accounting for years, and regardless of the difficulties in its measuring; it can have a major impact on the information content of financial statements. So the main purpose of this paper is to test the changes of accruals and MTB ratio over time in order to know the changes in financial reporting in Iran, because the evidence in the accounting literature in some countries shows conservatism in financial reporting increases over time. In fact, the validity of such claim make all time-series analysis of financial statements meaningless and misleading (which is considered an important source of information in financial markets). So studying about Iran accounting system is important and substantial for all groups of stakeholders. Due to the lack of a generally accepted definition of conservatism, some of conservatism proxies in financial reporting are defined and examined in this paper. This measures focus on the accumulation of non-operating accruals and MTB ratio. Statistical population of this research is the companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) since 2003 to 2011. After adjusting for outliers, sample consists of 116 companies. Although definitive conclusions is impossible, the existent evidence of financial reporting in TSE firms does not support the hypothesis of this paper and shows that the degree of conservatism in accounting has not increased over past decade.
ملخص الجهاز:
"This means that survey results are not consistent with previous forecasts and contrary to expectations based on the claim of increasing conservatism in accounting (Givoly and Hyan, 2000), the degree of conservatism in financial reporting of TSE’s firms doesn’t change bullishly.
S. firms, the claim of an increase in the degree of conservatism over time can be confirmed, but the evidence of this study showed no ascending or descending trends in both measures (nonoperational accruals and MTB ratio) as the proxy of conservatism.
Even though evidence of financial reporting among Iranian firms isn’t consistent with increasing conservatism in accounting, but this topic is too extensive and due to its effects on accounting it’s required to give more attention to it, especially in these areas ; • Examine the relationship between conservatis m and firm pension costs • Changes in the degree of conservatism in different industries • Comparison of conservatism in public and nongovernmental firms listed in TSE • The degree of conservatism in developing countries In fact, such incompatibilities are not limited merely to financial markets in Iran and according to research conducted in other countries, definitive verification of the claims through empirical research is not possible.
(2000)," The changing time-series properties of earnings, cash flows and accruals: has financial reporting become more conservative?" Journal of Accounting & Economics 29,pp 237-320 5) Givoly, D, Hayn, A, Natarajan (2007), "Measuring reporting conservatism", Accounting Review 82 (1), pp65–106."