Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine The role of firm growth in stock return sensitivity to discretionary accruals in Tehran Stock Exchange. Given the rich growth opportunities and high information asymmetry in high-growth firms, we expect that managers have incentives to use discretionary accruals, especially income increasing (positive) discretionary accruals, to signal favorable private information to external investors. The study period is between the years 1389 to 1393 and the statistical sample of the study is 149 the companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). We use Panel-Data Regression and EGLS method to estimate the model parameters. This paper contains significant and consistent results. Our empirical tests reveal that overall there is no significant difference in the pricing of discretionary accruals between high-growth and low-growth firms. However, consistent with our expectations, we find in high-growth firms compared to low-growth firms, stock return is more sensitive to positive discretionary accruals than to total discretionary accruals.