Shared continuing professional development courses and financial statement comparability

Shijiao Cao, Yongan Xu and Jianqiong Wang

Accounting and Business Research, 2024, vol. 54, issue 5, 552-579

Abstract: Although the benefits of financial statement comparability have been studied extensively, less is known about its determinants. This study examines how accounting education during the continuing professional development (CPD) stage helps improve comparability by leveraging the unique arrangement of CPD activities for non-practising certified public accountants (CPAs) in China. We argue that CPAs who attend the same CPD courses acquire similar interpretations and practising modes of accounting standards, which then systematically influence their practices. The empirical results show that two firms headquartered in provinces that employ the same CPD course supplier exhibit higher accounting comparability. Furthermore, this effect is stronger when the two firms have more CPAs in top management teams and/or have experienced the same education for a greater number of years. Finally, we consider the staggered adoption of CAS 14 (an equivalent of IFRS 15), during which initial professional development had a limited role, and find that firms that switched to the new standard provide accounting information that is more comparable if they share the same course supplier. Our findings shed light on the role of continuing accounting education in shaping accounting practices and deepen our understanding of how accounting comparability is achieved.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00014788.2023.2186831 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:acctbr:v:54:y:2024:i:5:p:552-579

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RABR20

DOI: 10.1080/00014788.2023.2186831

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting and Business Research is currently edited by Vivien Beattie

More articles in Accounting and Business Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().