In this study, we examine the relationship between accounting conservatism and board composition. We categorise outside directors according to their skills, abilities, connections and knowledge in three different categories: business experts, support specialists and community influentials. We address three main questions: Is the financial and accounting expertise of directors relevant to improving accounting conservatism? Does specialised expertise in the board affect the speed at which news is reflected in earnings? And how do the political ties of directors affect the sensitivity of earnings to bad news? Our sample consists of active US biotech firms publicly traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ stock exchanges during the 2005–2013 period. Our study confirms that not all outside directors are equally effective in monitoring and contracting and that certain kinds of outside directors, such as politicians, can even lower the sensitivity of earnings to bad news. Our robustness analysis confirms that these results are not conditional on the accounting measure, and suggest that distinguishing directors according to their skills and abilities is crucial to understanding the way in which firm boards affect conservatism.

中文翻译：

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董事会组成和会计保守主义：业务专家，支持专家和社区影响力的作用

在这项研究中，我们研究了会计保守主义与董事会组成之间的关系。我们根据外部董事的技能，能力，联系和知识将其分为三类：业务专家，支持专家和社区影响力。我们解决三个主要问题：董事的财务和会计专业知识是否与改善会计保守性有关？董事会的专门知识是否会影响新闻在收益中反映的速度？董事的政治关系如何影响收益对坏消息的敏感性？我们的样本包括2005-2013年期间在纽约证券交易所，美国证券交易所和纳斯达克股票交易所公开交易的活跃的美国生物技术公司。我们的研究证实，并非所有外部董事在监督和签约方面都同样有效，某些类型的外部董事（例如政客）甚至可以降低收益对坏消息的敏感性。我们的稳健性分析证实了这些结果并非以会计计量为条件，并建议根据其技能和能力区分董事对于理解公司董事会影响保守主义的方式至关重要。