治理机制、特殊治理水平与财务报告的稳健性

与以往的研究不同,我们将公司治理因素分成管理者可控的和不可控的两个部分,然后研究管理者可控部分即公司特殊治理水平对财务报告稳健性产生的影响。在整合了各种无条件公司治理机制的基础上,控制了其中管理者不可控的部分后得到了公司特殊治理变量。通过对我国A股上市公司2002—2006年的数据的分组检验和坏消息增量反应系数的显著性检验,发现特殊治理水平越高的公司其财务报告的稳健性水平也越高。     

Managerial Overconfidence and Accounting Conservatism

Overconfident managers overestimate future returns from their firms’ investments. Thus, we predict that overconfident managers will tend to delay loss recognition and generally use less conservative accounting. Furthermore, we test whether external monitoring helps to mitigate this effect. Using measures of both conditional and unconditional conservatism respectively, we find robust evidence of a negative relation between CEO overconfidence and accounting conservatism. We further find that external monitoring does not appear to mitigate this effect. Our findings add to the growing literature on overconfidence and complement the findings by Schrand and Zechman [2011] that overconfidence affects financial reporting behavior.     

国家控股对会计稳健性的影响研究

本文从公司治理角度分析中国上市公司的会计稳健性。利用2001-2004年A股上市公司的大样本数据,实证考察了国家控股对会计稳健性的影响以及它的制度根源。我们发现,国家控股上市公司对应着更低的会计稳健性。进一步的研究表明,内部人控制、债务软约束和政府干预等三大治理弱化是抑制国有公司披露意愿、降低其盈余质量的制度根源。本研究对资本市场的监管设计具有重要的启示:单纯强调准则的改革和外部的管制,对于提高国有公司的会计信息质量只能起到"隔靴搔痒"的效果,要想根本上改善国有公司的信息质量,监管层惟有从解决"内部治理弱化"的根源入手,通过健全国有产权监督机制、深化银行体制改革以及弱化地方政府干预动机等制度变革,从治理层面真正提高国有公司自身的披露意愿。     

产业政策与会计稳健性

会计信息能够为宏微观经济发展提供可靠、精准和有效的决策依据。"十三五"规划强调指出要"提高经济运行信息及时性、全面性和准确性",完善政策实施的效果评估。鉴于此,本文以具有中国特色的产业政策为切入点,研究产业政策是否以及如何影响企业的会计稳健性。结果发现,产业政策显著降低了企业的会计稳健性,而且在非国有企业、年轻企业和低成长性企业中更加显著。另外,与一般性产业政策相比,重点产业政策对企业会计稳健性的影响更大。基于作用路径的检验发现,产业政策缓解了企业的融资约束、税收负担以及诱发非国企高管攫取超额薪酬的行为,从而导致企业会计稳健性的降低。本研究揭示了产业政策对会计稳健性的影响及作用机理,提供了产业政策影响企业会计政策选择的直接证据。     

Debt Covenants and Accounting Conservatism

Using a sample of over 5,000 debt issues, I test whether firms with more extensive use of covenants in their public debt contracts exhibit timelier recognition of economic losses in accounting earnings. Covenants govern the transfer of decision-making and control rights from shareholders to bondholders when a company approaches financial distress and thereby limit managers' abilities to expropriate bondholder wealth. Covenants are expected to constrain managerial opportunism, however, only if the accounting system recognizes economic losses in earnings in a timely fashion. Thus, the demand for timely loss recognition should increase with a contract's reliance on covenants. Consistent with this conjecture, I find evidence that reliance on covenants in public debt contracts is positively associated with the degree of timely loss recognition. I also find evidence that the presence of prior private debt mitigates this relationship.     

Managerial Ownership and Accounting Conservatism

In this paper we examine the effect of managerial ownership on financial reporting conservatism. Separation of ownership and control gives rise to agency problems between managers and shareholders. Financial reporting conservatism is one potential mechanism to address these agency problems. We hypothesize that, as managerial ownership declines, the severity of agency problem increases, increasing the demand for conservatism. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that conservatism as measured by the asymmetric timeliness of earnings declines with managerial ownership. The negative association between managerial ownership and asymmetric timeliness of earnings is robust to various controls, in particular, for the investment opportunity set. We thus provide evidence of a demand for conservatism from the firm's shareholders.     

公司治理与会计稳健性——基于上市公司的实证研究

会计稳健性是财务报告的一个重要特征和惯例，已成为会计盈余的重要质量特征之一。本文运用basu（1997）模型，将会计稳健性定义为会计报告对坏消息的确认比好消息更及时，探讨了有关公司治理的几个重要因素对会计稳健性的影响。研究发现：在影响会计稳健性的治理因素中，银行借款比例与会计稳健性正相关，国家股比例与会计稳健性负相关，在国家股比例低的分组，会计稳健性较高。发行有B股的企业，会计稳健性与只有A股的企业没有显著差异。研究表明，会计稳健性作为会计报告质量的一种量度，随着会计制度和准则的国际接轨与完善，证券市场监管的加强，取得了一定成效，但是会计准则和会计制度不能保证会计报告的质量，尚需改革国内相关的制度背景，如公司治理、法律实施环境等。     

Accounting Conservatism and the Relation Between Returns and Accounting Data

This study adds change in cash investments and change in lagged operating assets to the regression of returns on earnings levels and earnings changes examined in Easton and Harris (1991). We argue that a positive coefficient on change in cash investments captures conservatism associated with investments in positive net present value projects the effects of which will not flow into the accounting statements until the expected future benefits are realized. A positive coefficient on change in lagged operating assets implies accounting conservatism associated with the application of accounting rules to operating assets in place. Our empirical results are, in general, consistent with these arguments. We examine differences in conservatism across samples with different market to book ratios, we compare firms with non-negative returns with firms with negative returns, we compare firms reporting losses with firms reporting profits, and we examine firms in different industries, firms with different levels of research and development expenditure, different amounts of depreciation, different amounts of advertising expense, and firms that adopt LIFO inventory valuation compared with those that adopt an alternative to LIFO.JEL Classification: M41     

会计稳健性研究述评

越来越多的研究表明,会计稳健性是财务报告最重要的特征。本文系统地评论了会计稳健性研究的最新内容。第一方面为会计稳健性的不同计量方法及各种计量方法之间存在的关系,第二方面为稳健性起因的最新研究,尤其是契约对企业会计稳健性的影响,第三方面为会计稳健性的经济后果,包括会计稳健性对资本成本的影响以及对企业真实经济活动的影响。文章最后指出了会计稳健性未来研究的方向。     

Debt Maturity Structure and Accounting Conservatism

This study examines the association between debt maturity structure and accounting conservatism. Short‐maturity debt can mitigate agency costs of debt arising from information asymmetry and suboptimal investment problems inherent in debt financing. As such, debt‐contracting demand for accounting conservatism is expected to be lower in the presence of more short‐maturity debt. We find that short‐maturity debt is negatively associated with accounting conservatism. As firms could commit to more accounting conservatism to gain access to long‐maturity debt, we conduct lead‐lag tests of the direction of causality, and the results suggest that more short‐maturity debt leads to less conservative reporting, rather than the reverse. We also find the negative relation between short‐maturity debt and accounting conservatism is more pronounced among financially distressed firms, where ex ante severity of agency costs of debt are higher. Collectively, our results contribute to our understanding of the role of accounting conservatism in debt contracting and show how debt maturity, a key and pervasive feature of creditor protection in debt contracting, affects accounting conservatism.     

多个“大债权人”与会计稳健性

本文考查了企业拥有多个大债权人对其会计稳健性的影响.研究发现,多个大债权人的共同监督显著提高了企业的会计稳健性水平.进一步研究发现:当企业复杂度较高或信息环境较差时,多个大债权人对会计稳健性的提升作用更加明显;但是当金融控股银行在债权人中占比较高时,该提升作用显著弱化.作用机制检验表明,多个大债权人的共同监督促使企业计提更多的资产减值损失和预计负债,进而提高了会计稳健性水平.最后,经济后果检验发现多个大债权人促使会计稳健性提高以后,企业的贷款融资规模显著增大,但融资成本未发生变化.本文提供了非辛迪加贷款模式下“债权人共同监督效果”的本土化证据,研究结论对企业和政策制定者具有重要的参考价值.     

Unexpected Accruals and Conditional Accounting Conservatism

Abstract:  This paper examines the impact of management discretion over accruals on conditional accounting conservatism, defined as the tendency of accountants to recognize bad news on a timelier basis than good news. Prior research suggests that conditional accounting conservatism reflected in earnings is mainly due to the accrual component of earnings, not the cash flow component of earnings. After decomposing total accruals into expected and unexpected accruals, I find that (1) conditional accounting conservatism reflected in accruals is mainly due to unexpected accruals; (2) the negative association between unconditional and conditional accounting conservatism is mainly attributable to unexpected accruals; and (3) firms with higher leverage exhibit conditionally more conservative accounting primarily through unexpected accruals. These results are robust to accrual models that take into account the systematic association between accruals and cash flows and their non-linearity and to the asymmetric persistence of earnings changes specification of conditional accounting conservatism. Taken together, these results suggest that managers exercise their discretion over accruals to expedite the recognition of bad news rather than good news.     

会计稳健性与会计信息的信贷决策有用性

采用基于账面市价比的固定效应模型度量公司的会计政策稳健性程度;采用盈利能力指标和偿债能力指标与事后的违约概率之间的相关性度量会计信息的信贷决策有用性,实证研究结果是会计稳健性强化了信贷决策失误与会计信息(盈利能力指标和偿债能力指标)之间的负相关关系.这表明,会计稳健性提高了会计信息的信贷决策有用性.     

会计稳健性对权益价值评估的影响——基于沪深上市公司的经验研究

本文通过使用2001～2009年上市公司的面板数据,对沪深上市公司会计稳健性定价系数进行测定,发现与美国资本市场类似,我国样本公司会计稳健性定价系数的均值小于0。进一步研究发现,由于我国特殊的制度背景,亏损公司盈余管理是影响会计稳健性定价系数异象的主要因素。具体来说,我们发现亏损样本公司组的会计稳健性定价系数的均值显著小于0,而盈利样本公司组的该系数大于0,市场在一定程度上能对好消息公司和坏消息公司进行区分。但是,在我国弱有效的资本市场上柠檬效应导致盈利公司会计稳健性系数的定价过低。     

会计稳健性与公司融资约束——基于两类稳健性视角的研究

作为会计信息质量特征之一的会计稳健性在公司融资活动中的经济后果,近来受到学者们的关注。本文基于四种计量模型度量样本公司的会计稳健性水平,实证发现稳健性的提高总体上有助于缓解公司的融资约束;更进一步,将会计稳健性区分为事前的非条件稳健和事后的条件稳健,对比回归后发现——内生于会计制度的非条件稳健性的提高,比条件稳健性这种事后稳健能更好地缓解公司的融资约束,其效果在2008年金融危机后尤为显著。此外,本文采用Granger因果检验方法,首次得到了条件稳健性是对公司融资约束的事后反应的实证依据。以上结论对于我国上市公司提高会计信息质量、降低融资约束具有很好的启示作用。     

Corporate Governance and Accounting Conservatism in China

A principal-agent relationship exists among creditors, shareholders and management, and information asymmetry among them leads to asymmetric loss functions, which induces conservative accounting. This paper investigates the determinants of accounting conservatism using accrual-based measures and data from 2001 to 2006 in China. We find that a higher degree of leverage, lower level of control of ultimate shareholders and lower level of management ownership lead to more conservative financial reporting. We also find that political concerns and pressures among state-owned enterprises are greater than those among non-state owned enterprises, which leads to more conservative financial reporting among the former. However, a decrease in such concerns leads to a decrease in accounting conservatism. Overall, we find that among the determinants of conservatism in China, debt is the most important, followed by ownership, and that board has little influence.     

论公允价值与会计稳健性的兼顾

2006年财政部颁布了新的会计准则,最大的特点就是全面引入了公允价值计量属性。公允价值计量的引入,有利于提高会计信息的决策有用性和价值相关性。但是由于公允价值固有的不确定性及确认传统会计中不予确认的未实现的收益等,会对会计信息的稳健性产生影响。因此,深入系统探讨公允价值会计信息的稳健性问题,有着重要的理论意义和现实意义。本文从相关理论及研究文献的回顾出发,通过分析公允价值的不确定性及风险性,认为公允价值会计信息在稳健性方面存在一定的缺陷,提出通过合理确定两者使用顺序和充分披露等方法,确保公允价值信息在提高信息决策的相关性方面又能兼顾稳健性。     

过度投资、投资效果与会计稳健性

与已有研究不同,本文结合投资规模和投资效果来界定过度投资,并将会计稳健性区分为条件稳健和非条件稳健,以研究过度投资与会计稳健性的相互关系.通过对我国2007-20013年A股上市公司样本的分析,本文发现在结合投资规模和投资效果来界定过度投资的情况下,过度投资和会计稳健性的相互影响明显比仅仅根据投资规模来界定过度投资的情形更显著,而且更为精确.与价值(业绩)上升企业相比,价值(业绩)下降企业的条件稳健性对过度投资具有更强的治理作用,而价值(业绩)下降企业的过度投资行为对非条件稳健性产生了显著的负向影响.