Resumen de On the persistent understatement of shareholder¿s equity around Europe

Araceli Mora Enguídanos, Juan Manuel García Lara

• We examine the existence of balance sheet conservative practices by listed companies in seven European countries, analysing the differences among them. Our results show that in every country under study there are conservative practices that lead to a persistent understatement of operating assets with respect to market value. This understatement could be mainly attributable to the usage of historic cost accounting as well as to the non-recognition of certain intangible assets. We also find that in code-law based countries balance sheet conservative practices are much more pronounced. Additionally, we analyse whether our results are influenced by a different sample composition, and if spurious scale effects can drive them.