The Effect of Sticky Cost Behavior and Conditional Conservatism on Analysis of Cost, Volume and Profit

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of sticky cost behavior and conditional conservatism on analysis of cost, volume and profit in companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange. Research Hypotheses Research hypotheses are described below: When sales level decreases, earnings are lower than when it increases. The difference in sticky earnings increases with asset and employee intensity and decreases with firm size. If conservatism is ignored in estimation, the estimates of the sticky earnings differential are biased upwards. Ignoring conservatism and its interactions with the firm characteristics in estimation has more impact on asset and employee intensity on stickiness biased upwards, and the estimates of the impact of size on stickiness are biased downwards. This study employs financial data of companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange during 2005-2011 periods, and the fixed effect panel data regression model is used to test hypotheses. Statistical analysis of data shows that the sticky cost behavior has impact on Model analysis of cost, volume and profit standards. Moreover, the results showed disregard for conditional conservatism changes exacerbating the sticky earnings differential. Also, the results showed that firm-specific characteristics have impact on sticky cost behavior and conditional conservatism. Discussion and According to the results, the analysis of cost, volume and profit adjusted estimates reveal the need for important revisions in many analyses of cost, volume and profit benchmarks. For example, the analysis of cost, volume and profit adjusted breakeven point is substantially higher for a firm with decreasing sales compared to an identical firm with increasing sales; therefore, the analysis of cost, volume and profit standard breakeven benchmark is useful neither for a firm with growing sales nor for a firm with shrinking sales. We also found that, even though conservatism is usually ignored in cost accounting, it has a sizable confounding effect on analysis of cost, volume and profit estimates.