利润操纵行为影响会计稳健性吗?——基于季度盈余不同汇总方法的经验证据

本文使用季度盈余的方法研究会计稳健性。以往文献主要使用会计年度(即公历年度)盈余分析我国上市公司的会计稳健性,相对无法有效地分离或控制利润操纵行为对会计稳健性的影响。本文使用不同的方法对季度盈余进行汇总,得到会计年度盈余及其他三种受利润操纵行为影响较弱的年度盈余。研究发现,我国上市公司的会计年度盈余和其他三种年度盈余都表现出了稳健性特征。这一经验证据表明,我国上市公司的报告盈余具有实质意义上的稳健性,利润操纵行为并未影响会计盈余的稳健性。

Is the Accounting Conservatism of China's Listed Companies Caused by Earnings Manipulation?Evidence Based on Different Aggregation Methods of Quarterly Earnings

Prior studies on accounting conservatism mainly focus on fiscal year earnings.Since evidence suggests that fiscal year earnings are more likely to be manipulated by management,these studies fail to separate the effects of conservatism and earnings manipulation effectively.In this paper,we aggregate quarterly earnings into annual earnings in four different ways.Beyond fiscal year earnings,the other three are annual earnings ending at interim quarter-ends with less manipulation.Our evidence suggests that both the fiscal year earnings and the other three annual earnings are conservative,so the reported earnings of China's listed companies are conservative despite earnings manipulation.