Corporate Lobbying, Visibility and Accounting Conservatism
46 Pages Posted: 19 Oct 2011 Last revised: 26 Dec 2017
Date Written: October 1, 2013
Abstract
In this study, we examine the role of firms’ visibility in shaping the relationship between accounting conservatism and political connectedness measured using corporate lobbying expenditures in the U.S. Firms’ visibility is measured using four variables – the number of analysts following the firm, the age of the firm, the number of foreign stock exchanges that the firm is cross-listed in and the number of public disclosures the firm makes. To control for differences in firm characteristics between lobbying and non-lobbying firms, the lobbying firms, i.e., the treatment firms are matched with a control group using propensity scores. We find that the positive association between corporate lobbying activities and accounting conservatism is more pronounced for lobbying firms with higher visibility. We also find that change in lobbying intensity predicts future changes in accounting conservatism and not vice versa; this suggests that corporate lobbying Granger-causes accounting conservatism. Collectively, these results suggest that public visibility plays an important role in the relationship between political connection and accounting conservatism.
Keywords: Political connection, visibility, lobbying, accounting conservatism
JEL Classification: M41, D72, P16
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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