Empirical Evaluation of the Sticky Behavior of Costs in the Tehran Stock Exchange Market

One of the primary assumptions of management accounting expresses that changes in costs are proportionate with increasing and decreasing the level of activity. This hypothesis, however, has been challenged recently by Anderson and colleagues [3], who state that the amount of the rise in costs with increasing the level of activity is more than the amount of fall in costs with equivalent amount of decreasing the level of activity. In essence, the goal of this research is to study the amount of the cost stickiness in the Tehran Stock Exchange by analyzing the administrative, general and selling costs. Precisely, the major aim of this research is finding appropriate responses for the following inquiries: 1- Whether administrative, general and selling costs are sticky? And 2) if the preeding costs are sticky, what is the amount of their severity? The statistical results of this research, which are based on the data derived from companies listed by the Tehran Stock Exchange in a 10-year period (from 1377 to 1386), indicate that when sales is increased by 1%, the administrative general and selling costs is also increased by 65%. However, when sale is decreased by 1%, the administrative general and selling costs is also decreased by 41%. These results hold for 50 active firms and for different industries. In this research, the degree of cost stickness in different firms and in different periods of time have also been evaluated. The results show that the degree of cost stickiness is lower in periods of times in which sales reduction has occured previously. Furthermore, cost stickiness is more intensive for those firms which maintain a higher ratio of total assets to sales.