Investigating the Sticky Behavior of Costs in Companies Listed by Tehran Stock Exchange (2011-2015)

One of the most important management accounting assumptions shows that changes in costs are related to increased and decreased level of activities. Recently, this issue has been investigated and discussed by Anderson et al., (2003) through proposing stickiness of costs.In other words, increased costs with increased activities are higher compared to decreased costs regarding decreased activities. This study aimed to study sticky costs in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) during 2011-2015. Indeed, administrative, general and selling costs were studies as the samples. In other words, the main purpose of this study was to answer the following questions: 1) are the administrative, general and selling costs sticky 2) if the costs are sticky, how much is the stickiness of costs The results of this study that are according to companies listed by TSE for a period of five years during 2011-2015, indicated that by 1% increase in sales revenue, the administrative, general and selling costs increase by 2.3%. One percent decrease in these costs is the result of 1% decrease in sales revenue. For companies that have bigger total assets to sales, higher degrees of stickiness is not observed.

Keywords:

administrative/general/selling costs , sticky costs , degree of stickiness of costs