 The effect of superstitious beliefs on financial reporting conservatism: Evidence from Chinese “Zodiac Year”Deng-Kui Si, Qianqian Du and Yukun Pan Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 231, issue C Abstract: Superstition persists in human societies despite economic and social progress, influencing behavior and decision-making across cultures. In this paper, we investigate the impact of superstitious beliefs on financial reporting practices. By exploiting within-individual variation in superstitious beliefs among top executives of Chinese private firms, we provide solid evidence that companies led by chairpersons in their zodiac year tend to respond to perceived misfortune by timely writing off impaired assets and are more likely to exhibit greater financial reporting conservatism. Further evidence suggests that both pessimism and regulatory concerns induced by zodiac year beliefs can explain the increase in financial reporting conservatism. Overall, our findings advance behavioral finance research on the relationship between top executives’ superstitious beliefs and firm outcomes. Keywords: Superstition; Chinese zodiac year; Financial reporting conservatism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:231:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125000368 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106916 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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