The concept of conditional conservatism has provided new insight into financial reporting and has stimulated considerable research since Basu (1997) developed it. While the concept encapsulated in the adage “anticipate no profits but anticipate all losses” is reasonably clear, estimating it...

A principal-components analysis demonstrates that common earnings factors explain a substantial portion of rm-level earnings variation, implying earnings shocks have substantial systematic components and are not almost fully diversifiable as prior literature has concluded. Furthermore, the...

This working paper is the first draft of our co-authored publication, "An Empirical Evaluation of Accounting Income Numbers," Journal of Accounting Research 6, 1968, pp.159-78. While undated, it subsequently was presented at the November 1967 Seminar on the Analysis of Security Prices organized...

This short essay is based on a presentation at the panel discussion on “The Most Incorrect Beliefs in Accounting” at the American Accounting Association Meetings in 2012. It addresses the inordinate amount of attention given in the literature to accounting's role in providing new information...

A substantial literature investigates conditional conservatism, defined as asymmetric accounting recognition of economic shocks ("news"), and how it depends on various market, political, and institutional variables. Studies typically assume the Basu [1997] asymmetric timeliness coefficient (the...

This essay was a Keynote Address at the Third International Conference of the Journal of International Accounting Research in São Paulo Brazil. It addresses the question of why the volume and quality of international accounting research have grown rapidly in recent years. It begins by asking...

The sharp economic downturn and turmoil in the financial markets, commonly referred to as the “global financial crisis,” has spawned an impressive outpouring of blame. The efficient market hypothesis - the idea that competitive financial markets ruthlessly exploit all available information...

The East Asian countries of Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand provide a rare opportunity to study the interaction between the accounting standards under which financial statements are prepared and the incentives of managers and auditors who prepare them. Their accounting standards are...

International differences in the demand for accounting income predictably affect the way it incorporates economic income (dividend-adjusted change in market value) over time. We characterize the quot;shareholderquot; and quot;stakeholderquot; corporate governance models of common and code law...

Book value of equity consists of two economically different components: retained earnings and contributed capital. We predict that book-to-market strategies work because the retained earnings component of the book value of equity includes the accumulation and, hence, the averaging of past...