The Relationship between Managerial Overconfidence and Restatement of Financial Statements

When firms correct the mistakes of the previous periods or change accounting procedures, they must restate their comparative financial statements. Restatement of financial statements has a negative impact on the relevance and reliability of financial information. It can lead to numerous negative consequences for investors and other stakeholders. The importance of restated financial statement justifies the efforts made to identify its determining factors. Overconfidence is one of the most important characteristics of managers that may lead to provide false financial statements. This article aims to study the effect of managerial overconfidence on the restatement of financial statements. The sample size consisted of 117 listed firms in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) from 2008 to 2014. Two measures based on the investment decisions of managers were employed to measure the managerial overconfidence. Since most Iranian firms restate their financial statements, this article studies the effect and severity of managerial overconfidence on restatement of financial statements. The severity of restatement is operationalized by the level of the restated net earnings. In order to achieve the objectives, two hypotheses were designed. For hypothesis testing, logistic regression and multivariate linear regression methods were employed. The results of hypothesis testing show that managerial overconfidence significantly leads to the increase in frequency and severity of restated financial statement. Findings also show that larger firm size leads to reduced restated severity.