Concentrated Ownership and Conservatism; Evidence from Tehran Stock Exchange

In this paper, we review the relationship between concentrated ownership and conservatism. On the base of the literature, there are different competing hypotheses about the relation between these two variables and the sign of such relationship. Private interest hypothesis suggest that owners with high ownership percentage use their voting power to manage the firm in the way that they want. On the other hand, active monitoring hypothesis argue that concentrated owners use their power to monitor the manager and decision-making on firm performance. For the review, we use regression model and financial information of listed companies in Tehran exchange securities for 1381-85 period (285 firm-year). We conclude that with consideration of some control variables such as size, growth, and etc, there is a negative relation between concentrated ownership and conservatism. The result is consistent with private benefit hypothesis and inconsistent with active monitoring hypothesis.