Ownership Structure and Accounting Conservatism: A Literature Review

With the rapid development of modern corporate theory, the divergence of interests of shareholders and management began to increase, leading to more and more conflicts between the shareholders and managers. The agency problem hindered the company and shareholders to maximize their value. A reasonable ownership structure and sound accounting information can alleviate the problems caused by the agency conflict. Therefore, many scholars began to research the relationship between ownership structure and accounting conservatism. This article summarizes the relevant literature mainly from the ownership concentration, the degree of equity checks and balances, institutional ownership and state ownership of these four aspects, in order to provide theoretical support for the follow-up study.