Search results

In recent years, Egypt has been developing rapidly from a socialist to a fully developed market‐based economy. One may expect that this economic transition towards a more capitalist orientation will influence the country’s cultural and socio‐economic environment, and consequently the behaviour of its corporate managers. The increasing separation of ownership and control of capital could be expected to increase agency problems associated with managerial decisions. In these circumstances, it should be interesting to identify whether ‘positive accounting’ hypotheses would apply in such an environment. Therefore, this paper examines the relevance to financial reporting in Egypt of some established positive accounting theory hypotheses in addition to a new hypothesis related to taxation. The evidence of the study is consistent with the validity of the conventional ‘bonus’ and ‘debt’ hypotheses and the new ‘taxation’ hypothesis. These conclusions are also consistent with recent empirical studies of cultural and socio‐economic change in Egypt.

This paper aims to complement a more conventional positive accounting theory (PAT)‐based study of accounting method choice in Egyptian firms by examining three alternative computational reasons for depreciation method choice: simplicity; compatibility with industry norm; and suitability for class of asset.

The paper draws on a questionnaire survey, sent to Egyptian companies, in which managers were asked to indicate their reasons for choosing depreciation methods as well as the actual depreciation methods used.

The paper finds that technical reasons were frequently given in survey responses from managers. However, the available evidence on the actual depreciation methods used by their firms and industries is in fact more consistent with PAT‐based theories of accounting choice than with such alternatives. This suggests that the responses to the survey reflected managers' rationalisations of decisions made for self‐interested purposes.

Most recent work on managerial decisions concerning accounting choices utilises data gathered from databases of published financial information and is undertaken within a PAT context. This study extends that approach by utilising the results of a questionnaire distributed in Egypt to test some additional hypotheses that reflect possible technical accounting reasons for justifying depreciation methods.