The Effect of Financial Statement Comparability on the Relevance of Accounting Information with Emphasis on the Role of Sophistication Investors and Information Asymmetry

According to the theoretical concepts of financial reporting, financial statement comparability is one of the qualitative characteristics of information which increases the decision usefulness of relevant accounting information. Comparability affects the usefulness of accounting information through two characteristics of investors, namely their sophistication and information asymmetry. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of financial statement comparability on the relevance of accounting information with emphasis on the role of sophisticated investors and information asymmetry.

The statistical population of this study is all companies listed in the Tehran Stock Market, among them 80 companies in the period 2010 to 2018 have been selected by systematic elimination method.For data analysis and hypothesis testing, multivariate regression model based on compound data is used.

The results of the research model estimation indicate that financial statement comparability has a positive and significant effect on relevance. The findings also show that when sophisticated investors are high, the impact of financial statement comparability on the relevance of accounting information increases. In addition, when information asymmetry is low the impact of financial statement comparability on the relevance of accounting information increases.

The results of this study showed that when there are more sophisticated investors and less private information, the financial statement comparability improves the information users’ ability to identify similarities and differences across economic phenomena. As a result, investors choose the best investment option that leads to efficient resource allocation.