This study examines the change of the demand for accounting conservatism surrounding share repurchases for a sample of US listed firms between 2003 and 2013. We find that the extent of accounting conservatism decreases significantly post share repurchase, consistent with the view that share repurchases reduce excess cash and information asymmetry, and consequently the agency-cost demand for conservative accounting decreases. Further analysis finds this result holds only for financially unconstrained firms and firms with low or no financial distress risk, but there is no significant decrease in accounting conservatism for financially constrained firms or for firms with high financial distress risk. This suggests that share repurchases in these firms might result from other motives such as manager hubris, earnings management, or false signals to mislead investors, and thus cannot reduce the agency-based demand for accounting conservatism. Our results add further evidences to the literature on accounting conservatism and firm financial policies.

这项研究考察了2003年至2013年间美国上市公司对股票回购的会计保守要求的变化。我们发现，股票回购后会计保守程度显着下降，这与股票回购减少多余现金的观点一致。以及信息不对称，因此代理机构对保守核算的成本需求下降。进一步的分析发现，该结果仅对财务不受约束的公司和财务困境风险低或没有财务风险的公司成立，但对于财务受限的公司或财务困境风险高的公司，会计保守性没有显着降低。这表明，这些公司的股票回购可能是由其他动机引起的，例如经理狂妄自大，收益管理，或错误的信号误导投资者，从而不能减少基于代理机构的会计保守要求。我们的结果为有关会计保守性和公司财务政策的文献提供了进一步的证据。