Um estudo empírico sobre as variações do patrimônio líquido de empresas brasileiras de capital aberto no período de 1986 a 2007

Abstract

Since the object of study of Accounting is the equity, and noticing the importance of these account groups to evidence the firms’ value, this work aimed to describe the variations occurred in the Equity of public Brazilian companies, based on Law 6.404/76. This is because all approaches related to the accounting treatment of Equity of the analyzed firms are founded on this legal instrument. The study was elaborated basing on available data in the Economatica database, comprising 519 companies of 20 distinct industries during the period from December 31st 1986 to December 31st 2007. These data were extracted from accounting statements published by the sample companies referred to the examined period. The methodology used to describe the variations occurred in the firms’ Equity comprised descriptive statistics and correlation matrixes, as well as the Chi-Square Test. The result indicated that the operational and financial variations occurred during the particular period are associated with each other, which sug