内部控制鉴证对会计盈余质量的影响研究——基于沪市A股公司的经验证据

内部控制鉴证产生与发展的主要目标是提高财务信息质量,因此会影响盈余质量。我国目前的内部控制鉴证是否有效地提高了会计盈余质量?内部控制鉴证的执行如何影响会计盈余质量?本文通过实证分析沪市A股公司2006—2008年内部控制鉴证的经验证据,发现内部控制鉴证提升了公司会计盈余质量,在控制了管理层信号传递动机以后结论仍然稳健。最后,本文根据实证分析结果和我国上市公司内部控制鉴证业务现状,提出了完善内部控制鉴证的若干政策建议。  

内部控制质量、信用模式与企业价值——基于深市A股上市公司的实证分析

内部控制和企业价值之间存在着密切的联系,内部控制是否有效及效率高低影响着企业的价值。内部控制质量高的企业有动机通过自愿性信息披露向市场传递企业价值较高的信号,由于信号传递作用,企业更容易获得较低成本的商业信用和银行信用借款,提升了企业价值,而内部控制质量低的企业没有动机进行内部控制信息披露,从而不得不付出较高的债务融资成本,降低了企业价值。  

Annual report readability and corporate agency costs

Annual reports are the main sources of information for outside investors’ investment decisions and enable shareholders to supervise the management. Difficulties with the readability of these reports may therefore have serious consequences. Using 19,221 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2001 to 2015, we investigate the association between annual report readability and corporate agency costs, where readability is proxied by report file length and/or file size. We find that firms with better annual report readability experience lower agency costs, and the negative association between readability and agency costs is more pronounced in firms with higher external audit quality, internal control quality or analyst coverage. These results hold after several robustness checks. The positive effect of annual report readability is stronger in private firms than in state-owned enterprises, and becomes stronger after the implementation of new accounting standards in 2007. Readable annual reports can help in monitoring corporate insiders’ opportunistic behavior and thus reduce agency costs.  

The Impact of Disclosures of Internal Control Weaknesses and Remediations on Investors' Perceptions of Earnings Quality

We hypothesize and find that firms making SOX‐mandated disclosures of material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting (ICOFR) exhibit lower investor‐perceived earnings quality (IPEQ) than nondisclosers. We measure IPEQ using e‐loading, a market‐returns–based representation of earnings quality developed by Ecker, Francis, Kim, Olsson, and Schipper (2006). Firms do not exhibit decreases in IPEQ after initially disclosing material weaknesses. This is consistent with investors having anticipated ICOFR strength based on observable firm characteristics. However, firms exhibit increases in IPEQ after receiving their first clean audit reports that confirm the remediation of previously disclosed weaknesses. This indicates that, although investors do not find initial weakness disclosures to be incrementally informative, SOX motivates firms to remediate weak controls and provides a venue for credible remediation disclosures, thus enhancing investors' perception of financial reporting reliability. These findings are consistent with the existence of regulatory benefits associated with SOX's internal control disclosure and audit requirements.