Accounting Comparability and Corporate Innovative Efficiency

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chircop, Justin; Collins, Daniel W.; Hass, Lars Helge; Nguyen, Nhat (Nate) Q.
• 署名单位: Lancaster University; University of Iowa; Colorado State University System; Colorado State University Fort Collins
• 刊物名称: ACCOUNTING REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-4826
• DOI: 10.2308/accr-52609
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 127-151
• 关键词: MANDATORY IFRS ADOPTION; earnings; accruals; QUALITY; performance; valuation

摘要

We predict that a firm's greater accounting comparability with its industry peers facilitates its learning from those peer firms' research and development (R&D) investments, allowing that firm to have greater innovative efficiency. We estimate accounting comparability using pro forma capitalized R&D earnings that link lagged R&D expenditures to future profitability employing the Almon (1965) distributed lag model. We find that greater accounting comparability leads to enhanced ability to predict future cash flows generated by R&D investments of peer firms. In the cross-section, we observe that the relation between accounting comparability and innovative efficiency is stronger if peer firms exhibit higher accounting (accrual) quality and are themselves successful innovators. In sum, this study shows that a shared qualitative characteristic of accounting, namely, accounting comparability, is positively associated with innovative efficiency.