Using an international sample of banks and country-level indices for individualism and uncertainty avoidance as proxies for national culture, we study how differences in culture across countries affect accounting conservatism and bank risk taking. Consistent with expectations, our cross-country...

Extant research suggests that conditional conservatism reduces information asymmetry between a firm and its shareholders as well as its debtholders. However, there is little evidence on whether conditional conservatism reduces information asymmetry differentially for shareholders and...