Corporate Board Attributes and CAC: A Comparative Study of France, Germany and UK

This paper investigates the impact of corporate board of directors’ attributes on conditional accounting conservatim in the French, German and British contexts. Using pooled regression model over the period 2009-2012, our findings report that the relationship between corporate board attributes and accounting conservatism is country dependent. First, regarding the board composition, we find that the effect of board size is positive for German firms, negative for French firms and insignificant for British firms. We also document a positive association between board independence and accounting conservatism for British firms. However, we find no evidence of a positive association between codetermination and earnings conservatism in German context. Second, female seats on board seem to increase conservative reporting in financial statement only for French firms. Lastly, board meeting frequency in French and British firms appears to increase accounting conservatism. As a robustness test, we use an alternative measure of accounting conservatism namely, time–series of earnings changes measure and confirm the previous results. Overall, our results reveal that corporate board affects the financial reporting quality.