Prof. Gassen erforscht, wie Transparenz von Finanz- und Produktinformationen wirtschaftliche Entscheidungen beeinflusst — von Unternehmensoffenlegung bis zu Verbraucherverhalten. Seine aktuelle Arbeit nutzt Feldexperimente und Archivdaten, um zu zeigen, wie Information (etwa CO₂-Kennzeichnung auf Lebensmitteln oder Finanzberichte privater Firmen) konkret das Verhalten von Konsumenten, Investoren und Geschäftspartnern verändert. Für Unternehmen und die öffentliche Hand relevant: Erkenntnisse darüber, wie Informationsgestaltung (Einheit, Visualisierung, Zugänglichkeit) Compliance, Kundenentscheidungen und Markteffizienzen steuert. Seine Methoden verbinden experimentelle Ökonomie mit statistischen Verfahren und Open-Science-Standards, um robuste, nachvollziehbare Ergebnisse zu liefern.
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Prof. Dr. Joachim Gassen
HU-FIS-Profil ↗SFB-TRR 266/1: Realwirtschaftliche Effekte von Transparenz (TP B04)
university
Zeitraum: 09/2007 - 12/2009 Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Joachim Gassen
Zeitraum: 10/2008 - 09/2012 Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Joachim Gassen
Förderer: DFG Sonderforschungsbereich Zeitraum: 01/2009 - 12/2012 Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Joachim Gassen
This study discusses the challenges and opportunities of establishing causal inference in empirical archival financial accounting research. Causal inference requires identification of a theoretically predicted causal mechanism in a research setting optimized to avoid endogenous causes and using a suitable statistical inference strategy. After briefly describing potential research design strategies, I analyze the frequency of causal studies published in leading business and economics journals. I identify causal studies by their abstract including an explicit reference to their causal nature and find that they are significantly more common in the areas of economics and finance compared to other business-oriented research disciplines like accounting. Also, the extent to which research designs are optimized for causal inference differs significantly between causal empirical archival studies in the area of financial accounting and finance. I discuss potential reasons for this gap and make some suggestions on how the demand for and supply of well-designed causal studies in the area of empirical archival financial accounting research might be increased. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
SSRN Electronic Journal · DOI
Abstract Prior research documents that conditional conservatism, measured as the asymmetric timeliness of earnings reflecting bad vs. good news, varies with cross-country differences in institutional regimes. In this paper, we examine the determinants of conditional conservatism and related earnings attributes internationally. First, using panel data, we investigate whether competing earnings attributes such as unconditional conservatism and income smoothing affect conditional conservatism and its international differences. We find that these attributes are predictably correlated with conditional conservatism. Second, we address the question whether income smoothing and conditional conservatism are two fundamentally different earnings attributes. We show theoretically that both attributes yield different earnings distributions and that the motivations for producing earnings which possess these attributes differ. To test these predictions empirically, we calculate firm-specific time-series measures of asymmetric timeliness, using a novel trigonometric measure based on the standard Basu (1997)-type regression. Using this cross-sectional data, we test whether conditional conservatism and income smoothing are different and find them to be only weakly correlated for a broad international sample. Also, we demonstrate that income smoothing explains international differences in conditional conservatism. Finally, we estimate simple determinant models of conditional conservatism and income smoothing, showing that both earnings attributes are driven by different explanatory firm-level factors: Conditional conservatism increases with the importance of debt financing, while income smoothing increases with the importance of dividends. Despite some important limitations, we believe our results to be meaningful because they show that cross-country differences in conditional conservatism are influenced by the effects of other accounting properties, predominantly income smoothing. Especially, legal regime appears to drive income smoothing while losing its explanatory power for conditional conservatism when firm-specific factors are controlled for.