盈余管理问题初探

近年来,会计信息的质量问题普遍堪忧.盈余管理问题是影响会计信息质量的一大因素.对盈余管理的研究要正确划分盈余管理与财务欺诈的界限.另外,要认清盈余管理可能造成的后果.本文的研究重点在于盈余管理的资本市场动因以及影响,并提出正确判断企业是否存在盈余管理应解决的标准问题.     

关于利润和盈余管理关系的探讨

对于什么是盈余管理，至今并无定论。美国会计学者斯考特（Scott）在其所著的《财务会计理论》一书中认为，盈余管理是会计政策的选择具有经济后果的一种具体表现。他认为，只要企业的管理人员有选择不同会计政策的自由．他们必定会选择使其效用最大化或使企业的市场价值最大化的会计政策．这就是所谓的盈余管理。美国著名会计学者Schiper在1989年认为盈余管理是．为了获得某种私人利益（而并非仅仅为了中立地处理经营活动），对外部财务报以告进行有目的的干预。而被普遍认可的是Hedy和Wahlen于1999年对盈余管理所作出的解释：当管理者在编制财务报告和构建经济交易时，运用判断改变财务报告，从而误导一些利益相关者对公司根本经济利益的理解，或者影响根据报告中会计数据形成的契约结果，盈余管理就产生了。     

浅析盈余管理的动因和方法

从上个世纪八十年代开始,盈余管理这一行为在西方国家受到会计理论界的广泛关注,到目前为止,已取得很多值得关注的研究成果.而我国在这方面起步较晚,理论上的研究还不够成熟,本文将对盈余管理的动因和方法进行阐述.     

基于资本市场动因的上市公司盈余管理分析

本文立足资本市场观考察我国上市公司盈余管理的资本市场动因,认为获取和保持筹资资格是我国上市公司盈余管理的突出动机。分析我国上市公司盈余管理的资本市场动因存在的制度安排、股权结构、市场投机等三个主要原因,提出从改进证券市场监管的相关制度安排、加强会计准则等相关法规政策的建设、健全上市公司的股权结构和治理结构、强化审计中介机构的监督职能、增强市场信息的透明度等五个方面探讨基于资本市场动因的盈余管理控制对策。     

我国上市公司中期财务报告自愿审计研究综述

审计需求可分为强制和自愿两个层次,而自愿需求才是高审计质量的真正动力。我国资本市场会计信息披露制度还在健全之中,这为我国上市公司中期财务报告自愿审计研究提供了研究课题。本文从我国上市公司中期财务报告自愿审计的动因和经济后果两个方面对国内现有相关研究成果做出了综述,并从拓展理论基础、扩展研究方法、探索研究背景三个方面对未来研究做出了展望。     

盈余管理的经济后果

国内外学者研究认为,资本市场确实存在着与管理的动机、条件和行为,管理层会进行盈余管理.那么盈余管理的经济后果如何?国内外学者都是主要从以下两方面进行研究的:(1)市场能否识别盈余管理行为?(2)盈余管理具有正面效应还是负面效应?     

盈余管理动因实证研究文献综述

管理层进行盈余管理的动机是多种多样的。本文选取了研究基于契约动因,政治动因,增发新股动因而进行的实证研究文献。在琼斯的文章中发现,美国在进行反倾销调查时,并没有将盈余管理纳入考虑,会导致被调查国家的公司得到不公正对待。章卫东的研究表明,上市公司所在地政府与企业高管,有支持和挖空上市的动机。     

盈余管理动因实证研究文献综述

管理层进行盈余管理的动机是多种多样的。本文选取了研究基于契约动因,政治动因,增发新股动因而进行的实证研究文献。在琼斯的文章中发现,美国在进行反倾销调查时,并没有将盈余管理纳入考虑,会导致被调查国家的公司得到不公正对待。章卫东的研究表明,上市公司所在地政府与企业高管,有支持和挖空上市的动机。     

美国上市公司财务重述动因及经济后果研究

财务重述是上市公司修正前期财务报告以反映这些报告中的差错被更正的过程.近年来,上市公司的财务重述现象日渐频繁.本文在介绍美国财务重述报告发展趋势的基础上,对财务重述的主要动因如会计准则的复杂性,交易复杂性,人为的错误以及刻意的欺诈等,以及财务重迷导致的后果,包括负面市场反应、降低公司信用等级,管理层和董事会成员的更换等进行了阐述.     

分析师管理、盈余预测与经济后果

分析师在市场中往往起到了至关重要的作用。而盈余管理也是企业用以向市场提供信息的重要手段。二者之间的相互联系、相互作用,其经济后果更是理论和实务界关心的重要问题。本文对分析师预测与盈余管理的核心概念进行梳理,结合已有的实证研究成果和我国实际情况,阐述了二者相互作用的机理,提出了一些能够影响二者关系的因素,并讨论了二者的经济后果。     

The Effects of Taxes,Agency Costs and Information Asymmetry on Earnings Management: A Comparison of Public and Private Firms

The realization of securities gains and losses to manage earnings in publicly-traded bank holding companies has been documented in a large number of studies, but very little is known about why managers engage in this behavior. Two possible explanations for earnings management put forth by Warfield, Wild, and Wild (1995) are that managers engage in this behavior either to circumvent accounting-based contracts designed to mitigate agency problems, or to reduce information asymmetry.We compare public and private banks' realizations of securities gains and losses to determine how their earnings management differs. We find that public banks consistently engage in more earnings management than private banks, and that the portion of their current period securities gains and losses attributable to earnings management is more positively associated with next period's earnings before securities gains and losses. These findings are consistent with earnings management occurring due to greater information asymmetry in public firms, and suggest that earnings management may not necessarily lead to the erosion in the quality of earnings suggested by Levitt (1998).     

Product Market Competition,Information and Earnings Management

We study theoretically the effect of product market competition on the incentives to engage in earnings manipulation, and we show how manipulating earnings is particularly rewarding in more competitive markets since the boost in market value of reporting good earnings is especially important. Using a panel dataset of about 70,000 observations spanning the period 1989–2011, we document that the competitive environment is an important determinant of Jones type discretionary accruals and it also affects real earnings management. In additional analysis, we find that the effect of competition on earnings manipulation is particularly important for companies that seem to be underperforming their competitors and that the competition‐earnings management linkage is moderated by the degree of information visibility at the industry level.     

证券投资收益的价值相关性与盈余管理研究

随着证券市场的发展,证券投资收益成为上市公司一项重要的非经常性损益。本文检验了2007年新会计准则下上市公司证券投资收益的价值相关性与盈余管理现象,研究结果表明:(1)我国证券市场能够区分营业利润与证券投资收益,并根据它们的重要性而赋予不同的估值;(2)证券投资收益具有价值相关性,但不具有及时性;(3)上市公司通过出售时机的选择对已实现证券投资收益进行了盈余管理;(4)证券投资采用公允价值变动确认损益的方式既提高了会计信息的相关性,又避免了盈余管理,是一种更好的证券投资收益确认模式。基于上述研究结果,建议交易性金融资产和可供出售金融资产的公允价值变动均确认为损益,并对其进行及时、透明的表外信息披露。     

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.     

Stock market listing status and real earnings management

This study analyzes real earnings management among privately held versus publicly listed firms. Our first finding is that public firms engage in more earnings management through operating activities. When a clear incentive to manage earnings in a specific direction is present we continue to find that public firms manage their earnings more than private firms. We reason that capital market pressure and ownership characteristics drive our results. Additional analyses reveal that public firms employ more real earnings management as a proportion of the total earnings management strategy. Furthermore, we find that mitigating factors of real earnings management have stronger impact in public firms. This study contributes to literature on non-accrual earnings management and to the broader understanding about the private vis-à-vis public firm reporting and operating behavior. Finally, we contribute by identifying an important societal cost of stock market listing, which is the increase in potentially value-destroying real earnings management.     

Evaluation of Extraordinary and Exceptional Items Disclosed by Hong Kong Companies

This study evaluates extraordinary and exceptional items (EI) disclosed in financial statements by Hong Kong companies from 1989 to 1993, prior to revision of SSAP 2. The results indicate that disclosures of positive EI were associated with market expectations of profit before taxes. If market expectations were higher than profit before EI and taxes (PBEI), positive EI (gains) were likely to be disclosed to adjust PBEI upwards and thus reduce the gap between reported and expected profits.
The results relating to negative EI (losses) showed that if companies had low historical economic performance they were more likely to disclose negative EI. Because weak historical economic performance is likely to be associated with low market expectations, management used this opportunity to 'spring clean' in order to show better economic performance in future years.
These findings suggest that managers engage in earnings management through disclosure of extraordinary items when they have flexibility to do so. In order to improve quality of financial disclosure, better accounting standards need to be developed for disclosures of extraordinary items, especially by newly developed and developing countries where accounting standards are at the formative stage.     

Cross‐Firm Real Earnings Management

Our analysis is rooted in the notion that stockholders can learn about the fundamental value of any firm from observing the earnings reports of its rivals. We argue that such intraindustry information transfers, which have been broadly documented in the empirical literature, may motivate managers to alter stockholders’ beliefs about the value of their firm not only by manipulating their own earnings report but also by influencing the earnings reports of rival firms. Managers obviously do not have access to the accounting system of peer firms, but they can nevertheless influence the earnings reports of rival firms by distorting real transactions that relate to the product market competition. We demonstrate such managerial behavior, which we refer to as cross‐firm real earnings management, and explore its potential consequences and interrelation with the practice of accounting‐based earnings management within an industry setting with imperfect (nonproprietary) accounting information.     

Earnings management,market discounts and the performance of private equity placements

Private equity placement data allow us to determine whether sophisticated investors can uncover the true value of firms. This can be done by defining sophisticated investors as those who meet the stringent participation requirements of the private equity market. Our results show private equity issuing firms overstate their earnings in the quarter preceding private equity placement announcements and that sophisticated investors do not ask for a fair discount when purchasing the shares of the private issuing firms. We also find evidence showing that the reversal of the effects of pre-issue earnings management is a significant determinant of the long-term performance of private issues. Results further show that post-issue stock performance and operating performance of firms using “aggressive” earnings management significantly underperform those using more “conservative” earnings management.     

财务披露管理方式的维度观

财务披露是一个多维向量 ,其维度包括信息内容、组织形式、信息冗余度、信息置信度、披露者的解释、披露媒介以及披露时机。对该向量的任何一个维度施加影响 ,都会导致其发生某些变化 ,从而都属于财务披露管理活动。我国企业对财务披露的管理手段比较单一 ,倾向于直接操纵盈余数据。财务披露管理方式的多样化可以减少直接操纵盈余数据的行为 ,这对于改善我国目前存在的财务信息严重失真问题大有裨益。     

高铁能提升分析师盈余预测的准确度吗?——来自上市公司的证据

本文搜集了2006-2016年中国201个地级市高铁开通的情况,并匹配了A股1,244家上市公司的面板数据,利用双重差分(DID)模型,研究了高铁开通对证券分析师盈余预测的影响。研究结果显示:高铁通车之后,分析师盈余预测的精准度显著提升,分歧度和乐观度显著下降。进一步考察高铁发挥作用的内在机制,发现高铁开通显著增加了对沿线公司进行实地调研的分析师数量及人均调研次数。高铁开通对分析师盈余预测的影响存在异质性,影响主要体现在信息处理成本较低的企业、公司治理水平较好的企业以及分析师面临买方压力较小的企业中。动态地来看,高铁开通对分析师盈余预测的影响主要体现在通车两年以后。此外,在利用工具变量法、控制飞机出行以减少内生性问题之后,上述结论仍稳健。这说明高铁的开通改善了资本市场的信息环境,使得分析师能够更好地扮演信息中介的角色。文章较早研究了高铁开通对分析师盈余预测的影响,揭示了高铁在金融市场的信息传导效应。