Accounting conservatism of cross-listing firms in the pre- and post-Sarbanes Oxley periods

This study investigates the level of accounting conservatism of a sample of cross-listed firms, American Depository Receipts (ADRs), during the pre- and post-Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) periods. After examining two proxies for accounting conservatism, Basu's [Basu, S. (1997). The conservatism principle and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings. Journal of Accounting and Economics 24(1), 3-37.] conservatism measure and abnormal accruals, we find that the SOX-exposed Levels II and III ADRs become more conservative during the post-SOX period while the SOX-unexposed Level I ADRs have no increase in the level of accounting conservatism. Further, we investigate whether such an increase in accounting conservatism is associated with different levels of shareholder protection in ADRs' home countries, and find that only Levels II and III ADRs from code law (weak shareholder protection) countries become more conservative and Levels II and III ADRs from common law (strong shareholder protection) countries have no change in accounting conservatism. These results suggest that SOX-exposed cross-listing firms from weak shareholder protection countries are most greatly influenced by the stringent requirements in SOX, and hence respond by increasing conservatism in their financial reporting.