This study examines whether and how financial statement comparability facilitates the dissemination of innovative knowledge between firms and stimulates the creation of new knowledge. Using cross-patent citations to track interfirm knowledge transfers, we find that comparability increases firms' incentives to learn from peers and create new patents that cite their peers' existing patents. The investigation into the mechanism reveals that comparability improves firms’ ability to estimate the monetary value of peer knowledge and predict their own financial benefits from knowledge acquisition. The impact of comparability is more pronounced when peer knowledge is more publicly accessible or of higher monetary value. Consequently, the acquired knowledge fosters follow-on innovation, enabling firms to produce more patents with greater economic significance. Evidence from two quasi-natural experiments suggests that our findings are plausibly causal. Overall, our study highlights the important role of accounting comparability in facilitating knowledge dissemination.

中文翻译：

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站在巨人的肩膀上：财务报告的可比性和知识积累


本研究探讨了财务报表可比性是否以及如何促进企业之间创新知识的传播并刺激新知识的创造。使用跨专利引用来跟踪公司间的知识转移，我们发现可比性增加了公司向同行学习并创建引用同行现有专利的新专利的动机。对这一机制的调查表明，可比性提高了企业评估同行知识的货币价值和预测自身从知识获取中获得经济利益的能力。当同行知识更容易公开获取或具有更高的货币价值时，可比性的影响就更加明显。因此，所获得的知识可以促进后续创新，使企业能够生产更多具有更大经济意义的专利。两项准自然实验的证据表明，我们的发现似乎是有因果关系的。总体而言，我们的研究强调了会计可比性在促进知识传播方面的重要作用。