Quality of reported earnings by Chinese firms: The influence of ownership structure

This paper examines the influence of ownership structure on earnings quality of firms listed on the Chinese Stock Exchanges. We empirically test four contemporary earnings quality measures, including volatility of earnings, variability of earnings over cash flows, correlations between accruals and cash flows, and level of discretionary accruals, for 1438 firms listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange. We find that although state-owned firms are bigger in size and appear more profitable based on reported earnings; privately-owned firms, foreign-owned firms and society-owned firms outperform the state-controlled firms in earnings quality; and foreign-owned firms have the highest earnings quality among all types of ownership groups. We find that there is not much difference in earnings quality between collectively-owned firms and state-owned firms and employee-owned firms exercise least discretion in earnings management. The findings in particular will have direct policy implications for the China Securities Regulatory Committee (CSRC).     

Earnings persistence, accruals and managerial share ownership

We investigate the relationship between earnings persistence and a broad measure of total accruals (TACC). We propose and find that in Australia, TACC is less persistent than cash flows. We further propose that the persistence of accrual components is positively associated with the reliability of those components. However, we find that the least reliable accrual component has the greatest persistence and suggest possible reasons for this. We then investigate the relationship between earnings persistence and managerial share ownership, but find no evidence of a consistent, strong relationship. Rather, for the non-current operating accruals we find evidence consistent with incentive alignment for large firms with high operating cash flows, whereas for small firms we find evidence consistent with efficient contracting.     

终极产权性质、第一大股东对盈余质量的影响分析

以我国2006年底已经实施了股改的深沪两地A股上市公司2007～2008年的经验数据为样本,采用收益-盈余模型检验了终极产权性质、第一大股东与盈余质量之间的关系,研究发现:对于已经实施了股改的上市公司,股权仍然相对集中;当上市公司属于国家终极控制时,盈余质量会较高;第一大股东持股比例与盈余质量正相关;第一大股东对上市公司董事会的控制能力与盈余质量正相关;其他大股东对控股股东的制衡能力对盈余质量的影响不显著.     

Family control, board independence and earnings management: Evidence based on Hong Kong firms

In this study, we document that independent corporate boards of Hong Kong firms provide effective monitoring of earnings management, which suggests that despite differences in institutional environments, corporate board independence is important to ensure high-quality financial reporting. The findings also show that the monitoring effectiveness of corporate boards is moderated in family-controlled firms, either through ownership concentration or the presence of family members on corporate boards. The results based on firms reporting small earnings increases provide additional support for our finding that the monitoring effectiveness of independent corporate boards is moderated in family-controlled firms.     

Benefits of Downward Earnings Management and Political Connection: Evidence from Government Subsidy and Market Pricing

This paper examines the role of downward earnings management and political connection on the receipt of government subsidies and market pricing of subsidies. Using subsidies data hand-collected from Chinese listed firms over the period 2004–2014, the results show a significantly positive association between downward earnings management and the receipt of government subsidies. The results also reveal that a firm's political connection is conducive to securing subsidies for poor performers, but not for good performers. Market pricing analyses demonstrate that share markets value subsidies positively in general, but the effect is ameliorated in firms conducting downward earnings management. No discernible difference is found between the market pricing of subsidies received by firms with political connections and those without.     

Government ownership and the capital structure of firms: Analysis of an institutional context from China

Emerging economies provide interesting scenarios for examining how institutional context influences the financing behavior of firms. In this study, we examine the capital structure of Chinese listed firms following the Split-Share Structure Reform of 2005. This reform allowed a reduction of government ownership by making government shares tradable. We find that the impact of government ownership on leverage is dependent on whether the government is the largest shareholder in a firm and whether the government ownership is through a parent state-owned enterprise. In addition, we document that the largest non-government shareholder positively influences leverage. Overall, our results reveal that the largest controlling shareholder, either government or non-government, has a significant impact on the capital structure of Chinese firms.     

政府审计在国有资产审计监督体系中的作用

我国当前的国有资产审计监督体系包括内部审计监督、社会审计监督和政府审计监督等三个层次。国有资产审计监督是我国国家审计机关的法定审计范围,在对国有资产审计监督方面具有先天的优势,应加强政府审计在国有资产审计监督体系中的主导作用。     

Leverage and investment under a state-owned bank lending environment: Evidence from China

This study examines the relations between leverage and investment in China's listed firms, where corporate debt is principally provided by state-owned banks. We obtain three major findings. First, there is a negative relation between leverage and investment. Second, the negative relation between leverage and investment is weaker in firms with low growth opportunities and poor operating performance than in firms with high growth opportunities and good operating performance. Third, the negative relation between leverage and investment is weaker in firms with a higher level of state shareholding than in firms with a lower level of state shareholding. Overall, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the state-owned banks in China impose fewer restrictions on the capital expenditures of low growth and poorly performing firms and also firms with greater state ownership. This creates an overinvestment bias in these firms.     

Do Foreign Directors Mitigate Earnings Management? Evidence From China

In this study, we use a sample of Chinese companies to examine the monitoring role of foreign directors in deterring earnings management. Our findings show that earnings management is significantly negatively associated with the presence and ratio of foreign directors on corporate boards. We further find that, under these conditions, earnings management is less pronounced in state-owned enterprises as compared to others. These findings are robust to various specifications of earnings management as well as to the approach used in matching the treatment and control samples. Interestingly, the negative impact of board membership of foreign directors on earnings management varies with audit quality, IFRS convergence, investor protection and the similarity or difference of the time zones of the foreign directors and China.     

关于我国政府融资状况与国有银行业发展的思考

在转轨经济时期,我国政府不仅通过征税和发行国债的显性融资渠道融资,还通过对银行系统的直接控制和干预获得了隐性的融资渠道.在国有商业银行体系建立和发展的初期,政府隐性融资与国有银行之间存在互惠互利的关系;随着我国经济市场化程度的提高,特别是1994年以后,政府对隐性融资可依赖程度降低,国有商业银行对政府的隐性融资采取了较为谨慎的态度,这种融资方式的弊端逐渐暴露.本文分两阶段对政府融资状况与国有银行业发展的相互影响和未来趋势进行分析,在此基础上,探讨了我国财政体制和金融体制改革的一些主要思路.     

Earnings attributes and investor-protection: International evidence

This study explores the effects of investor-protection on reported earnings quality assessed on the basis of four accounting-based earnings attributes (accruals quality, earnings persistence, earnings predictability, and earnings smoothness). We test the hypothesis that favorable values of each earnings attribute (considered individually) occur in countries whose institutional characteristics provide relatively strong investor-protection. The results based on K-means cluster analysis of institutional characteristics are mixed. Earnings smoothness is less prevalent in strong investor-protection countries, as hypothesized. However both accruals quality and earnings predictability are better in countries whose institutional characteristics are relatively weak. No association is found between investor-protection and earnings persistence, except that countries with low ownership concentration appear to have high earnings persistence. The results based on regression analysis are consistent with those based on the cluster analysis. These results imply that conclusions about the impact of institutional characteristics on earnings quality depend on how earnings quality is measured.     

An analysis of earnings management by European private firms

This paper addresses the questions of whether private firms in eight European countries engage in earnings management, and if so, whether tax incentives affect such practices. To measure earnings management, we analyze the earnings distributions of private firms and compare these distributions with those of public firms in the same countries. The empirical evidence suggests that in absence of capital market pressures, firms still have incentives to manage earnings, as we find that private firms avoid reporting small losses. We further find that private firms in some countries where tax regulation strongly influences financial accounting do not avoid reporting small losses. We attribute this finding to tax incentives reducing firms’ benefits of (upward) earnings management. Finally, our results suggest that some types of earnings management are due to capital market pressures and are specific to public firms since we do not find evidence that private firms avoid earnings decreases.     

强制性分红:压力下移与盈余管理——基于央企控股上市公司的经验证据

国有资本收益上缴制度是一项强制性分红制度,这种政策带来的强制性分红压力会沿着企业控制层级往下转移.本文实证检验了强制性分红对中央企业盈余管理行为的影响.研究发现,中央企业会通过减少盈余的方式规避该政策带来的压力,尤其是,金子塔层级越低的中央企业这种规避行为越明显.进一步,中央企业面临强制性分红压力与业绩考核压力时,更注重业绩考核的影响.本研究有助于更加全面、准确地评价国有资本收益分配制度的实施效果,为政策优化提供经验证据.     

On the nonlinear relation between product market competition and earnings quality

The literature documents conflicting results regarding the influence of product market competition on earnings quality. We extend this stream of literature by incorporating competition’s effect on both the opportunities and the incentives to manage earnings. The combination of both effects results in a nonlinear relation between product market competition and earnings quality. At low competition levels, additional information associated with one more rival helps reveal earnings irregularity and deter earnings management to a larger extent than its effect on the incentives to manage earnings, suggesting a positive relation between competition and earnings quality. At high competition levels, the latter effect dominates the former. We thus predict a positive (negative) relation between competition and earnings quality at low (high) competition levels. Consistent with our hypothesis, we document an inverted U-shaped relation between earnings quality and product market competition.     

The outperformance of family firms: the role of variance in earnings per share and analyst forecast dispersion on the Swiss market

Recent studies provide empirical evidence that family firms are outperforming their non-family counterparts in terms of stock market performance. For the Swiss stock market we find that family firms indeed outperform their non-family counterparts after controlling for firm size and beta. In addition, our data shows that family firms display more stable earnings per share in contrast to their non-family counterparts. Furthermore we find that the variance of earnings per share positively affects analyst forecast dispersion. According to anomaly literature, lower analyst forecast dispersion has been found to induce higher excess return, which our data supports for the Swiss stock market. By linking variance of earnings per share, analyst forecast dispersion and stock performance we provide an insightful explanation for the excess stock market returns of family firms. In addition, our text extends the theory of dispersion effect with an additional empirical element, the variance of earnings per share.      

The impact of changes in bank ownership structure on the allocation of capital: International evidence

A new wave of bank privatizations in the past decade has significantly changed the ownership structure of banking systems around the world. This paper explores how these changes affect the allocation of capital within countries. Increases in domestic blockholder ownership of banks adversely affect the allocation of capital through increased lending activity to less productive industries and to those with less dependence on external finance. This result is more pronounced in countries with higher levels of corruption. I find some evidence that foreign presence improves capital allocation efficiency by increasing lending to more productive industries, primarily in common law countries.