Whether the reform of the accounting system affects the corporate innovative behavior: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the accounting system reform on corporate innovation behavior and the heterogeneity and underlying mechanisms of this impact. This paper further aims to study the impact of accounting system reform on corporate value.
Design/methodology/approach
This study takes China's A-share listed corporates as a sample and uses the exogenous policy shock of the implementation of the New Accounting Standards in 2007 to design the identification strategy of propensity score matching and difference-in-differences method. By comparing the differences between the innovation level of corporates in high-tech industries and non-high-tech industries before and after the implementation of the New Accounting Standards, the impact of the accounting system reform on corporates' innovative behavior can be identified.
Findings
Results show that compared with corporates in traditional industries, high-tech corporates obtained higher patent output after the implementation of the New Accounting Standards. This reform mainly affects corporate innovation by improving corporate risk-taking. In addition, this paper finds that the reform of the accounting system has increased the market value of high-tech corporates in the long run.
Originality/value
This study provides new empirical evidence for addressing the insufficient innovation incentives for market entities and enriches the existing literature on the economic effects of the change of accounting systems and the influencing factors of corporate innovative behavior from the accounting system perspective.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
For helpful many constructive comments and suggestions, the authors thank the editors and anonymous reviewers who have helped to improve the quality and value of this paper. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Major Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21ZDA045) and the Humanities and Social Sciences Planning Project of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 18YJA790049). Zefeng Tong is the corresponding author of this paper.
Citation
Hou, X., Xie, H., Xu, S., Tong, Z. and Liu, Z. (2023), "Whether the reform of the accounting system affects the corporate innovative behavior: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment", Kybernetes, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-09-2022-1321
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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