Discretionary Disclosure: A Note

This article extends the models of discretionary disclosure. The level of disclosure will be affected by the costs of such disclosure. Verrecchia (1983) shows that when the cost of disclosure is fixed then the threshold level of disclosure is positively related to that cost. Verrecchia (1990a) shows that in the presence of fixed disclosure costs the threshold level of disclosure is negatively related to the quality of information (precision) to be disclosed. The intuition for the result is that as information is more precise, withholding it is more detrimental for the firm and hence the threshold for disclosure is lowered. The model here expands the cost of disclosure to be a function of information quality. When this is the case, the Verrecchia (1990a) unambiguous result does not hold. The presence of information quality in the cost function creates a countervailing force such that more precise information does not necessarily imply more disclosure. This creates the intuitive result that precise information of a proprietary nature might be withheld from the market.     

上市公司信息披露质量与证券分析师盈利预测

本文研究了上市公司信息披露状况与分析师预测行为之间的关系，结果发现，分析师的预测准确性总体上显著优于随机游走模型。进一步的研究发现，上市公司信息披露状况会对证券分析师的预测特征产生影响，信息披露透明度越高，分析师预测对会计盈利数据的依赖程度越低，预测准确性也随之提高。     

An Experimental Market's Investigation of Discretionary Financial Disclosure

The extent to which market forces can induce full financial disclosure by managers has long been an issue of interest to regulators. Investigating this phenomenon with naturally occurring data produces a major obstacle: since managers' private information sets are unknown, it is necessary to make assumptions about them in order to interpret the nature (e.g., favourable or unfavourable, income increasing or income decreasing) of the information that is disclosed. The validity of the inferences relies critically on the validity of these assumptions. The present study uses a laboratory experiment to test three hypotheses derived from prior analytical and empirical research: (H1) When disclosure costs are zero, managers voluntarily disclose all (good and bad) news; (H2) When disclosure costs are positive. managers only disclose news which exceeds some threshold: and (H3) The mandatory disclosure of non-proprietary information induces an increase in the disclosure of correlated. proprietary information. One hundred and fifty-six subjects participated in markets with one firm manager and three investors. Over thirteen independent periods, the managers decided whether to truthfully disclose the liquidation value of the asset under their stewardship, and the investors submitted competing bids for the asset. With costless disclosure. investors price-protected themselves when managers withheld information, but the price penalty that they imposed was insufficient to induce full disclosure. With positive disclosure cost, investors reduced the price penalty that they imposed for non-disclosure, and managers disclosed proportionally fewer of the less extreme good news. Finally, mandatory disclosure of information had no significant impact on the voluntary disclosure of correlated proprietary information. Discussion centres on our failure to support the (equilibrium) prediction from analytical research that full disclosure should obtain when disclosures are costless. Several limitations of the study are examined. and it remains an open question whether additional trials (periods) in the present study might have provided full disclosure.     

业绩预告披露与盈余管理研究

盈余管理存在的根本原因在于投资者与管理层之间的信息不对称。业绩预告作为上市公司未来经营成果、财务状况与现金流量的预测,在很大程度上会影响投资者对上市公司的评估及其投资决策。从业绩预告披露的特征方面出发,研究业绩预告披露与盈余管理之间的关系,包括业绩预告的性质、预告精确度、预告误差分别与盈余管理程度的关系,结果发现：发布业绩预告的公司,盈余管理水平更高。预告精确度以及预告期间与预测当期盈余管理水平正相关,预测误差与盈余管理水平负相关。当消息类型不同的时候,预测的强制性与否以及＂变脸＂对盈余管理水平的影响不同。结论支持了上市公司财务报告迎合业绩预告披露的说法。     

盈余管理、信息披露与再次被收购

基于上市公司多次被收购这一现象,本文以2007-2015年我国发生并购的上市公司为研究样本,探讨了盈余管理对企业再次被收购概率及并购后绩效的影响,以及企业履行信息披露义务发挥的作用.研究发现:(1)公司盈余管理提高了再次被收购的可能性,被收购取得的短期绩效更好但长期绩效更差.(2)公司积极履行信息披露义务会削弱盈余管理与再次被收购概率及并购后市场反应之间的正向关系、削弱盈余管理与再次被收购后长期绩效之间的反向关系.(3)中介效应分析结果表明,盈余管理程度越高的企业,分析师跟踪程度越高,因而再次被收购的可能性越大.本文丰富了目标公司特征的研究,同时对并购重组信息披露管理办法及市场中介监管条例的制定具有参考价值.     

Voluntary Disclosure, Earnings Quality, and Cost of Capital

We investigate the relations among voluntary disclosure, earnings quality, and cost of capital. We find that firms with good earnings quality have more expansive voluntary disclosures (as proxied by a self‐constructed index of coded items found in 677 firms' annual reports and 10‐K filings in fiscal 2001) than firms with poor earnings quality. In unconditional tests, we find that more voluntary disclosure is associated with a lower cost of capital. However, consistent with the complementary association between disclosure and earnings quality, we find that the disclosure effect on cost of capital is substantially reduced or disappears completely (depending on the cost of capital proxy) once we condition on earnings quality. Extensions probing alternative proxies show that our findings are robust to measures of earnings quality and cost of capital, but not to other measures of voluntary disclosure. In particular, we find opposite relations for voluntary disclosure measures based on management forecasts and conference calls, and we find no relations for a press release based measure.     

信息披露与国有股权私有化中的盈余管理

国有股权私有化是我国国有企业改革的重要措施。国有股权私有化过程中是否存在影响国有股权转让价格的盈余管理行为,以及如何抑制这种盈余管理,是我国国有企业改革中需要予以回答的重大问题。本文以我国通过控制权转移进行私有化的上市公司为样本,研究了国有股权私有化过程中的盈余管理以及信息披露对盈余管理影响的问题。研究发现,国有企业在国有股权私有化前1年和当年的操控性应计项目显著小于0,而私有化后的第1年显著大于0;及时披露国有股权私有化信息的公司在私有化前的操控性应计项目显著大于滞后披露信息的公司。以上结果表明,国有企业在国有股权私有化前存在降低收益的盈余管理行为,信息及时披露对私有化前的盈余管理有显著的抑制作用。本文的研究结论对规范我国国有企业改制和国有产权转让行为具有重要启示。     

Performance, Growth and Earnings Management

We study the relationship between the amount of managed earnings and firms’ earnings performance and expected growth in a reporting model, where managers manipulate earnings to influence the valuation of firms’ equity while bearing a cost that is increasing and convex in the amount of managed earnings. In the unique revealing equilibrium to the model, firms with higher performance and growth over-report earnings by a larger amount because price responsiveness increases with earnings performance and growth. And earnings quality, defined as the proportion of true economic earnings in total reported earnings, increases with earnings performance but decreases with earnings growth. We conduct empirical tests on a large sample and a restatement sample using different proxies for earnings management. Results from the large sample tests support our predictions while results from the restatement sample tests are mixed. Our study provides an alternative explanation to the positive relationship between discretionary accruals estimated from the Jones model and firms’ performance and growth.     

Earnings Variability and Disclosure of R&D: Evidence from Press Releases

This study explores press releases in the pharmaceutical industry to expand our understanding of how investments in R&D outlays influence uncertainty of future earnings. The findings make two contributions to the literature. First, they provide evidence that equal investments in different R&D ventures are associated with differential variability of future earnings. This result suggests that non‐financial information contained in press releases captures attributes of firm‐specific R&D investments that are not revealed through R&D expenditures reported in financial statements. Second, prior studies have indicated that investments in pharmaceutical R&D are associated with the highest variability of future earnings among all industries. The results, however, suggest that for a large class of low‐risk pharmaceutical R&D investments, the relative variability of future earnings is low and similar to that generated by capital expenditures. The findings hold when we control for endogeneity in voluntary disclosure of press releases.     

Voluntary Disclosure of Internal Control Weakness and Earnings Quality: Evidence From China

Using a sample of 1059 listed firms that voluntarily provide internal control reports in the period 2010–2011, this paper investigates the relationship between voluntary disclosure of internal control weaknesses (ICWs) and earnings quality in China. Our results show that earnings quality, measured by absolute discretionary accruals, is significantly associated with voluntary disclosure of ICWs. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that both accounting-related and non-accounting-related ICWs affect earnings quality. This study contributes to the internal control literature by extending the evidence for ICW disclosure to an emerging economy and examining the impact of disclosure of different types of ICWs on earnings quality. This study demonstrates that the control of non-accounting-related ICWs is critical for enterprise risk management.     

Managerial Ownership, Information Content of Earnings, and Discretionary Accruals in a Non–US Setting

This study employs Danish data to examine the empirical relationship between the proportion of managerial ownership and two characteristics of accounting earnings: the information content of earnings and the magnitude of discretionary accruals. In previous research concerning American firms, Warfield et al. (1995) document a positive relationship between managerial ownership and the information content of earnings, and a negative relationship between managerial ownership and discretionary accruals. We question the generality of the Warfield et al. result, as the ownership structure found in most other countries, including Denmark, deviates from the US ownership configuration. In fact, Danish data indicate that the information content of earnings is inversely related to managerial ownership.     

年报风险信息披露有助于提高分析师预测准确度吗?

年报风险信息披露既可能提高信息质量而对分析师预测行为产生积极影响,又可能因增加分析师的风险感知而对分析师预测行为产生消极影响。本文通过文本分析法量化年报风险信息披露,进而探讨其对分析师预测准确度的影响。基于公司层面的证据表明:风险信息披露频率越高,分析师预测准确度越高,而且这种积极影响主要体现在非国有企业、盈余质量较高及公司治理较好组。基于分析师层面的证据表明:风险信息披露频率越高,分析师预测准确度越高,这种积极影响主要体现在非明星、行业专长较低、对公司追踪时间较少的分析师中。这说明我国年报风险信息异质性较弱,有助于提高分析师预测准确度,从而支持了风险信息披露的信息观。本文结论有助于丰富信息披露以及分析师预测文献。     

Earnings Management and Firm Performance Following Open-Market Repurchases

Both post‐repurchase abnormal returns and reported improvement in operating performance are driven, at least in part, by pre‐repurchase downward earnings management rather than genuine growth in profitability. The downward earnings management increases with both the percentage of the company that managers repurchase and CEO ownership. Pre‐repurchase abnormal accruals are also negatively associated with future performance, with the association driven mainly by those firms that report the largest income‐decreasing abnormal accruals. The study suggests that one reason firms experience post‐repurchase abnormal returns is that post‐repurchase realized earnings growth exceeds expectations formed on the basis of pre‐repurchase deflated earnings numbers.     

Regulation Fair Disclosure and Earnings Information: Market, Analyst, and Corporate Responses

With the adoption of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD), market behavior around earnings releases displays no significant change in return volatility (after controlling for decimalization of stock trading) but significant increases in trading volume due to difference in opinion. Analyst forecast dispersion increases, and increases in other measures of disagreement and difference of opinion suggest greater difficulty in forming forecasts beyond the current quarter. Corporations increase the quantity of voluntary disclosures, but only for current quarter earnings. Thus, Reg FD seems to increase the quantity of information available to the public while imposing greater demands on investment professionals.     

上市公司非经常性损益信息披露的改进研究

为了保证上市公司的财务信息更客观地反映其财务状况和盈利能力,中国证监会于2008年11月发布公告对2007年的规定进行了修订。通过对100家上市公司财务报表中非经常性损益披露的统计分析,发现新的披露制度仍存在概念界定不完整、披露不统一、与退市政策关联度弱等不足之处,有待于进一步改进。     

The Usefulness of Measures of Consistency of Discretionary Components of Accruals in the Detection of Earnings Management

Abstract:  Prior research has shown the prevalence of measurement error in models used to estimate aggregate discretionary accruals. In these models, the incremental information content of the various components of accruals is ignored. Limited prior research and data gathered from firms under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) litigation indicate that managers use either one or more than one component of accruals simultaneously, in a consistent way to manipulate bottom-line earnings in a given direction. I propose two measures that capture the consistency between the discretionary components of accruals and test their significance in earnings management (EM) detection in firms that have artificially added accrual manipulation and firms that were targeted by the SEC for accrual manipulation. There is evidence that this information is incrementally useful in detecting EM. This finding paves the way for improvements in the discretionary accruals measure by including consistency information from the components of aggregate accruals.     

相得益彰抑或掩人耳目:盈余操纵与MD&A中非财务信息披露

本文以2007-2012年之间的盈余重述公司为样本,研究了高管是否利用管理层讨论与分析(MD&A)中非财务信息来为其盈余操纵行为做掩盖。研究发现,非财务信息披露的一个动机是为了隐藏盈余操纵,在隐藏期间(被重述年度与重述年度之间),进行盈余重述的公司会披露更多的MD&A中非财务信息。进一步,我们发现盈余操纵与MD&A中非财务信息披露的关系在隐藏动机较大(例如有股权激励)的公司当中更强,由此验证了我们的隐藏动机假说。本文提供了一个策略性的进行非财务信息披露的情景,补充了有关信息披露动机的文献。本文提请投资者更加清晰的辨别非财务信息和盈余信息;也提请监管层能够更加严格的监管信息披露,尤其是非财务信息披露。