The DOI matches its Crossref record; 23 of the 23 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Are Selling, General, and Administrative Costs “Sticky”?
Abstract
A fundamental assumption in cost accounting is that the relation between costs and volume is symmetric for volume increases and decreases. In this study, we investigate whether costs are “sticky”—that is, whether costs increase more when activity rises than they decrease when activity falls by an equivalent amount. We find, for 7,629 firms over 20 years, that selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs increase on average 0.55% per 1% increase in sales but decrease only 0.35% per 1% decrease in sales. Our analysis compares the traditional model of cost behavior in which costs move proportionately with changes in activity with an alternative model in which sticky costs occur because managers deliberately adjust the resources committed to activities. We test hypotheses about the properties of sticky costs and how the degree of stickiness of SG&A costs varies with firm circumstances.
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Cites
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Cited by
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“Moreover, Anderson et al. (2003) interpreted the increase in sales and administrative costs (SG&A) between two periods to decrease in a firm’s profits.”
BackgroundResultInfluential
Metadata
- Authors
- Anderson, M. C., Banker, R. D., & Janakiraman, S. N.
- Venue
- Journal of Accounting Research
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2003-01-20
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 47-63
- ISSN
- 0021-8456 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-679X
- OpenAlex
- W2067475882
- Cited by
- 1,352
- References
- 23
- FWCI
- 19.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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