This study investigates the association between Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) overconfidence and conditional accounting conservatism. Relying on upper echelons and overconfidence theories and based on a large sample of US-listed firms’ data from 1992 to 2019 (21,626 firm-year observations), we find a statistically and economically significant negative relationship between CFO overconfidence and conditional accounting conservatism, suggesting that overconfident CFOs tend to diminish conditional accounting conservatism. These findings persist in a series of robustness tests. In the mechanism analysis, we predict that overconfident CFOs aim to convey private information by reducing conditional accounting conservatism. We prove this conjecture by observing that overconfident CFOs who adopt lower levels of conditional accounting conservatism increase earnings informativeness (i.e., the amount of information about future cash flows or earnings contained in current stock returns) and reduce their precautionary incentives to save cash. We further rule out another mechanism (i.e. compensation concerns) that may motivate overconfident CFOs to reduce conditional accounting conservatism. Moreover, we show that overconfident CFOs with higher powers are more able to minimize conditional accounting conservatism. Our study highlights the significance and motivation of overconfident CFOs in determining asymmetric recognition of good and bad news.

本研究调查了首席财务官 (CFO) 过度自信与有条件会计保守主义之间的关联。依靠高层和过度自信理论，并基于 1992 年至 2019 年美国上市公司的大样本数据（21,626 个公司年度观察），我们发现 CFO 过度自信与条件会计保守主义之间存在统计上和经济上显着的负相关关系，表明过度自信的首席财务官往往会削弱有条件的会计保守主义。这些发现在一系列稳健性测试中得到了证实。在机制分析中，我们预测过度自信的首席财务官旨在通过减少条件会计保守主义来传达私人信息。我们通过观察过度自信的首席财务官采用较低水平的有条件会计保守性来证明这一猜想，这会增加收益信息量（即当前股票回报中包含的有关未来现金流或收益的信息量）并减少他们节省现金的预防性激励。我们进一步排除了另一种可能促使过度自信的首席财务官减少有条件会计保守主义的机制（即薪酬问题）。此外，我们表明，过度自信且拥有较高权力的首席财务官更有能力最大限度地减少有条件的会计保守主义。我们的研究强调了过度自信的首席财务官在确定好消息和坏消息的不对称认知方面的重要性和动机。