This study examines the impact of a CEO’s confidence level on decisions regarding research and development (R&D) expenditures. R&D is an important part of a company’s strategy for achieving long-term sustainable growth. However, due to its discretionary nature, some CEOs choose to reduce R&D costs to enhance short-term performance. In other words, R&D cost behavior may vary depending on CEO characteristics. This study examines whether, in an effort to improve their firm’s future performance, CEOs who are highly overconfident tend not to actively decrease R&D expenditures even when sales decrease. We posit that CEO overconfidence affects the cost behavior of R&D spending that is not related to their personal privileges. A cost behavior model was utilized to verify the relationship between CEOs’ propensity for overconfidence and R&D expenditures. Our findings show that highly overconfident CEOs tend not to take actions to reduce R&D costs even if sales decrease because CEO overconfidence tends to be positively related to R&D. Since R&D represents both costs and long-term investments, policy support for capitalizing R&D costs can be considered as enhancing the sustainability of businesses.

Previous research showed that in the early years after adoption, the change to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) impacted accounting quality. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether those effects have changed over time in companies within countries that have different legal regimes, enforcement, and degrees of external investor protection. We measure accounting quality using discretionary accruals, real activities manipulation, and the stock price value relevance of earnings per share and book value per share. The findings show that the early effects of IFRS adoption continue with the passage of time in companies listed in countries with common law systems, such as the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia, which provide powerful outside investor protection in capital markets. Yet, the early effects of IFRS adoption do not continue after the passage of time in companies listed in Asian countries with statutory law systems, such as Korea and China, which have low levels of outside investor protection. Moreover, it is difficult to obtain evidence that value relevance has improved after the accounting measurement of corporate value shifted to IFRS. The results show that there are differences in the sustained effects on accounting quality, even after the application of IFRS due to the different social, economic, and cultural characteristics of countries.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the cost behavior of research and development (R&D) expenditures. R&D costs can be divided into capitalized R&D expenditures and expensed R&D expenditures. The authors examine the cost behavior of total R&D expenditures, as well as the cost behavior of capitalized and expensed R&D expenditures. In addition, it is investigated how the cost behavior varies depending on company management performance. Research results document that the total cost of R&D and capitalized R&D expenditures are not affected by changes in sales. While the cost of expensed R&D has a positive relationship with sales changes, asymmetric cost behavior does not exist. However, when combined with such factors as successive declines in sales, performance, and economic growth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), asymmetric cost behavior emerges. In addition, the authors found that companies with high management performance smooth their earnings by expensing R&D expenditures as incurred rather than capitalizing them. For firms with high earnings, cost behavior of total R&D expenditures and capitalized R&D expenditures moves in the opposite direction of sales. That is, companies with high performance have low capitalization ratio of R&D. The results of this study are significant in that they expand the understanding of managers’ behaviors regarding R&D expenditures.

We posit that the effect of non‐audit fees on auditor independence in Korea is based on audit client performance. Further, we suggest that an audit client with low performance has an incentive to purchase non‐audit services (NAS) from an incumbent auditor to facilitate earnings management and steer accounting practices in a preferred direction. We find evidence that as non‐audit fees in Korea increase, auditor independence is reduced only for low‐performing audit clients. Thus, unconditional prohibition of NAS seems unnecessary. Regulators and policymakers should examine the motivation for purchasing NAS, particularly among audit clients with poor performance.