نقش حسابداری در دانش مالی رفتاری

ABSTRACT The Role of Accounting in Behavioral Finance

Accounting plays an important role in capital markets because the financial statements of an organization summarize the economic consequences of its business activities and are the most widely available source of information. The accounting system of an organization provides the mechanism to identify and measure these business activities, aggregate them into financial statements, and communicate them to shareholders and other users of economic information.

With the aim of reducing international differences in accounting standards, the IASB has been largely responsible for developing a set of financial reporting standards that can be used internationally. Indeed, the IASB is highly successful in establishing International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS1) as globally accepted accounting standards with over 115 countries permitting or requiring them to be used for financial reporting purpose. An implicit assumption of the IASB seems to be that IFRS are objective, neutral and value-free, because it assumes that financial statements are comparable across countries if accountants all over the world would apply IFRS. However, the accounting literature provides clear evidence that this is not always the case (e.g. Doupnik and Richter 2003, 2004; Doupnik and Tsakumis 2004; Hellmann et al. 2010).

One concern that arises from this is that stakeholders may be misled into believing that there is more uniformity and objectivity in practice than actually is the case. This short letter draws attention to the importance of the need to give adequate consideration to the behavioral aspects of accounting from the development process through to the application of the information. This is important because behavioral research concerning investment decisions is often solely focusing on the human aspects of investors and related stakeholders. However, the information used by investors and capital markets participants for making economic decisions is prepared by accountants, who use their professional judgments by interpreting and applying accounting standards.

Importantly, the preparation and disclosure of accounting information is mainly determined by accounting standards such as IFRS. These standards are developed by a standard setter in a political process and interpreted and applied by accountants. Finally, financial statements have to be interpreted by auditors and monitored by enforcement bodies. As such, behavioral issues can arise in the following three dimensions: (1) Standard setting, (2) Preparation of financial statements, and (3) Auditing and enforcement. The remainder of this short letter provides some important examples showing that accounting information is inherently behavioral from the development process through to the application of the information.