Research Discussion Papers, Bank of Finland
No 1/2014:
Gender differences in financial reporting decision-making: Evidence from accounting conservatism
Bill Francis ()
, Iftekhar Hasan ()
, Jong Chool Park ()
and Qiang Wu ()
Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of CFO gender on
corporate financial reporting decision-making. Focusing on firms that
experience changes of CFO from male to female, the paper compares the
firms’ degree of accounting conservatism between pre- and post-transition
periods. We find that female CFOs are more conservative in their financial
reporting. In addition, we find that the relation between CFO gender and
conservatism varies with the levels of various firm risks such as
litigation risk, default risk, systematic risk, and CFO specific risk such
as job security risk. We further find that risk-aversion of female CFOs is
associated with less equity-based compensation, lower firm risk, higher
tangibility level, and lower dividend payout level. Overall, the study
provides strong support for the notion that female CFOs are more risk
averse than male CFOs, which leads female CFOs to adopt more conservative
financial reporting policies.
Keywords: accounting conservatism; gender; CFO; risk-aversion; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: J16; M41; (follow links to similar papers)
58 pages, January 10, 2014
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- This paper is published as:
-
Francis, Bill, Iftekhar Hasan, Jong Chool Park and Qiang Wu, (2015), 'Gender differences in financial reporting decision-making: Evidence from accounting conservatism', Contemporary Accounting Research, Vol. 32, September, No. 3, pages 1285-1318
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