Study on the Influence of CFO Characteristics on Accounting Conservatism of Listed Companies

Accounting Department of Beijing Jiaotong University, Haidian District, Beijing, China

^* Miao Yu: 20120676@bjtu.edu.cn

Abstract

As the information reflection of social economy, the quality of accounting information is closely related to economic development and market operation system. And accounting conservatism is one of the important standards to measure of quality of accounting information. As the maker and executor of the financial strategy of the listed company, the CFO’s different personal characteristics will affect its choice of different accounting policies, thus affecting the accounting conservatism of the enterprise. Therefore, this paper selects CFOs of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2016 to 2018 as research objects, respectively discusses the influence of CFO’s natural attributes and social attributes on accounting conservatism, and analyzes the moderating effect of property rights and CFO’s power on the relationship between them. The results show that the CFO’s age, tenure, education, professional skills, salary and number of part-time jobs are negatively correlated with accounting conservatism. The female CFO, shareholding and concurrent director are significantly positively correlated with accounting conservatism. The difference of property right nature and CFO power moderates the relationship between CFO characteristics and accounting conservatism to some extent. On this basis, this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions on how to improve accounting conservatism and promote economic development.