The Provision of Tax Services by Incumbent Auditors and Earnings Management: Evidence from Korea

This study examines the associations between the provision of tax services by incumbent auditors and earnings management. We investigate whether three different effects of tax service provision play different roles in accounting practices. The three effects include the audit independence effect, the knowledge spillover effect, and the tax avoidance effect. If the provision of tax services by incumbent auditors harms auditor independence, firms may exercise greater earnings management (audit independence effect). However, if incumbent auditors gain incremental knowledge by offering tax services, the quality of their audit services could be enhanced, and therefore, reported earnings could be more conservative (knowledge spillover effect). If tax service fee leads to low taxable income, it could depress book income when book-tax conformity is high (tax avoidance effect). We find that the provision of tax services generally improves earnings quality by curtailing opportunistic accounting practices. The results also suggest that the negative association between the provision of tax services and discretionary accruals seems to be primarily driven by the knowledge spillover effect as opposed to the tax avoidance effect. Additional analysis is conducted in examining whether the tax avoidance effect exists in a sub-sample.     

Earnings Management Vehicles for Korean Firms

We investigated the vehicles that Korean firms use when the firms manage earnings. We partitioned our sample into low, mid and high accrual sub‐samples based on discretionary accruals. Low accrual firms are defined as income‐decreasing firms whereas the high accrual firms are considered income increasing firms in this study. We decomposed accounting earnings into cash from operations and various components of accruals in a systematic way. Next we examined the types of accruals individual firms use when the respective firms increase reported earnings. The empirical results of the study indicate that there are clear discrepancies in the earnings management vehicles firm use when the firms manage earnings depending on the directions of earnings management. More specifically, income‐increasing firms frequently employ non‐cash revenues including asset‐disposal gains. Income‐decreasing firms employ non‐cash expenses including bad‐debt expenses and asset‐disposal losses. Firms also tend to use current accruals but to a limited extent as current accruals entail cash flow implications in the following years.     

政治联系与盈余信息含量——基于中国民营上市公司的经验证据

以2004-2010年中国民营上市公司为样本,研究了政治联系与民营上市公司盈余信息含量之间的关系。研究发现,政治联系增强了民营上市公司会计盈余与超额累计收益之间的正向关系,表明政治联系提高了盈余信息质量。进一步研究发现,上市公司所在地的市场化进程程度调节了政治联系对盈余信息含量的正向影响,即对地处市场化程度较高地区的民营上市公司而言,政治联系与盈余信息含量的正相关关系相对较弱。研究发现对于外部投资者判断民营上市公司盈余质量及其投资决策具有借鉴意义。     

Insider Trading, Earnings Management and Corporate Governance: Empirical Evidence Based on Hong Kong Firms

We document positive association between earnings management and insider selling after the fiscal year‐end for Hong Kong firms. This positive association is especially evident before the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Our findings suggest that Hong Kong executives manage reported earnings to maximize their private benefits from insider selling. Additionally, we find that a higher proportion of independent directors (INED) on corporate boards moderate the positive association between insider selling and earnings management. Stricter monitoring of earnings management by INED is especially evident when no member of the family with majority ownership is present on corporate boards as a director. This suggests that the presence of family members with majority ownership on corporate boards significantly reduces INED's monitoring effectiveness. Our findings suggest that strict regulations are needed to control insider trading, and independence of corporate boards is important for monitoring of earnings management associated with insider trading. Furthermore, appointment of family members with majority shareholdings should be avoided to enhance independence and to monitor effectiveness of corporate boards.     

Earnings Management and the Accrual Anomaly: Evidence from China

Using the unique Chinese setting in which the “delisting regulation” is based on accounting numbers, we separate earnings management into (1) earnings management responding to regulation and (2) earnings management prompted by market pressures and further document that earnings management responding to market pressures produces the accrual anomaly (Sloan, 1996) and earnings management responding to regulation does not. Initially unable to detect the accrual anomaly in China's stock market, we were reluctant to conclude that China's market is more efficient than that in the United States. After observing a disproportionate number of “big‐bath” loss firm‐years in the lowest decile of accruals for our sample, we estimated the apparent earnings distortion induced by the delisting regulation. When we excluded this distortion from our analysis, we documented the presence of the accrual anomaly in China's stock market. We conclude that the delisting regulation creates an artificial distribution of firm earnings in China that affects the market pricing of accruals and masks the accrual anomaly. The results have implications for policy makers and regulators in general, and those in emerging markets in particular.     

关系型交易、内部控制与盈余管理——基于应计与真实盈余管理的经验证据

与以往单纯从内部控制这一规则治理机制出发研究盈余管理的文献不同,引入关系型交易这一关系治理机制,探讨两种不同的治理机制及其交互作用对上市公司应计盈余管理和真实盈余管理行为的影响。检验结果表明,随着供应商/客户关系交易比例的增加,上市公司进行正向应计盈余管理和真实盈余管理的程度越严重;进一步研究发现,高质量内部控制有助于抑制供应商关系型交易诱发的正向应计盈余管理和真实盈余管理,但是对客户关系型交易诱发的应计/真实盈余管理无显著影响。     

Majority Shareholder Ownership and Real Earnings Management: Evidence from Korea

This article examines the influence of majority shareholder ownership on real earnings management. It investigates whether there is a conflict between or an alignment of majority and minority shareholders' interests. If majority shareholders' interests are aligned with those of minority shareholders, a greater majority shareholder ownership lowers real earnings management. On the other hand, if they are not aligned, majority shareholders' attempts to exploit minority shareholders will increase real earnings management. This study does not find a systematic relationship between majority shareholder ownership and real earnings management. However, real earnings management significantly decreases in the upward earnings management incentive bracket as majority shareholder ownership increases. This occurs primarily because majority shareholders are more sensitive to upward real earnings management, which has a negative effect on future performance. These results suggest that the larger the ownership of majority shareholders, the more they play a positive role in mitigating real earnings management. This positive role is only effective in the post‐Asian economic crisis period. These results may suggest that the economic crisis in Korea helped majority shareholders more conscious of the long‐term costs of real earnings management. These findings support the convergence‐of‐interests hypothesis, providing evidence by investigating real earnings management instead of accruals‐based earnings management.     

经济政策不确定性对盈余管理的影响研究

本文运用斯坦福大学教授Bloom等人运用文本挖掘法构建的中国经济政策不确定性指数,首次探讨了经济政策不确定性对盈余管理的影响。研究发现,经济政策不确定性可以抑制企业的盈余管理,即企业的盈余质量得到提高。进一步检验,发现只有当企业处于不亏损状态的时候,经济政策不确定性才会对企业的盈余管理产生影响。最后,当企业减少盈余管理活动的时候,可以抵抗经济政策不确定性对投资活动产生的不利影响,但无法降低经济政策不确定性对融资活动所产生的负向影响。     

Managerial Ownership and Earnings Management: Theory and Empirical Evidence from Japan

This paper examines the relationship between managerial ownership and opportunistic managerial behavior relating to earnings management. Economics theory identifies two apparently conflicting effects of managerial ownership on managers' incentives: the incentive alignment effect and the management entrenchment effect. We construct a theoretical model demonstrating the two effects. This model suggests that as managerial ownership increases, earnings management decreases for both high and low levels of managerial ownership, while it increases for intermediate levels of managerial ownership if the sensitivity of the probability of managerial dismissal to the corporate performance is high enough and/or the manager's private benefit derived from managerial position is high enough. In a sample of Japanese firms, we find a significant nonmonotonic relationship between managerial ownership and discretionary accruals, consistent with our model.     

业绩预告披露与盈余管理关系的实证研究——基于中国上市公司的经验证据

本文以新会计准则实施后沪深A股上市公司为研究对象,研究了业绩预告披露与盈余管理的关系.研究发现:披露业绩预告公司的盈余管理程度显著高于未披露的公司;强制披露业绩预告公司的盈余管理程度显著高于自愿披露的公司;且上市公司在披露业绩预告前预期到了盈余管理后的盈利状况,盈余管理的主要目的是为了"规避"或"迎合"业绩预告制度.研究还发现资产规模小、盈利能力差与负债高的公司更可能从事盈余管理.最后,结合实证研究结论,为提高业绩预告信息的可靠性、进一步完善业绩预告制度,提出了相关政策建议.     

Strategizing Environmental Policy and Compliance for Firm Economic Sustainability: Evidence from Taiwanese Electronics Firms

This study aims to examine whether the compliance of environmental policies can sustain firm economic performance, and whether a timing issue is relevant to firm economic sustainability in pursuit of eco‐friendly efforts. Offering models predominantly based on the institutional theory, this study tests hypotheses using data from 284 companies in the electronics sector in Taiwan during the period from 1997 to 2010. The findings reveal that the execution of environment policies mostly improves firm economic sustainability and some joint green efforts can even strengthen such sustainability; however, firms aiming to sustain their economic performance should not hasten to undertake eco‐friendly efforts, implying that first movers may not be guaranteed firm economic performance. Thus, managers should carefully strategize their green efforts to comply with environmental policies, and execute them in due course to prevent disadvantages, such as market uncertainty and complexity of green practices, while conquering organizational inertia. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

上市公司分类转移盈余管理研究——基于政策监管视角

基于中国证监会要求披露"扣除非经常性损益后的净利润"的制度背景,实证考察了上市公司分类转移盈余管理行为。研究发现,"扣除非经常性损益后的净利润"的相关监管政策尽管强调了核心利润的重要性,但却引发了上市公司通过非经常性盈余进行分类转移的盈余管理行为,即将一些经常性费用类项目划分为非经常性损失,或将非经常性收益划分为经常性收益。进一步研究发现,在政策出台后盈利公司具有明显的分类转移盈余管理的动机与表现特征。     

Impact of Environmental Performance on Firm Value for Sustainable Investment: Evidence from Large US Firms

This research examines the impact of environmental performance on firm value, applying the event study methodology to Newsweek’s ‘Green Rankings’ announcement of 2012 for large US firms. Specifically, it analyzes the impact of the absolute green score and green rank of firms on their performance in the stock market. We found that investors perceive the announcement as positive news, leading to significant positive standardized cumulative abnormal returns (SCARs). After controlling for industry‐ and firm‐specific effects, we observed that firms with repeated green rankings for enhancing environmental performance showed significantly higher SCARs than those with either reduced or unchanged environmental performance. In addition, the environmental impact score measuring environmental damage from a firm's operational activities was found to be the most influential factor in improving the firm's value. Our findings are beneficial to managers in allocating resources to different types of environmental initiative, and provide valuable insight for sustainable environmental investment. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

“营改增”对企业财务管理的影响

由于时代不断发展进步,我国的税务制度也相应的得到了完善与发展,就企业来讲,实行营改增从某种程度上讲能够对企业财务工作造成极大的影响,进而要想强化企业财务管理,就一定要实行营改增,只有这样才能有效提升企业财务管理能力。在此前提下,该文章主要就营改增对企业财务管理造成的影响展开了必要的分析,同时具体描述了实行"营改增"之后提高企业财务管理能力的相关对策,意在更好的促进同行间的交流,不断提高企业的财务管理方面的水平。     

Earnings volatility in America: Evidence from matched CPS

We offer new evidence on earnings volatility of men and women in the United States over the past four decades by using matched data from the March Current Population Survey. We construct a measure of total volatility that encompasses both permanent and transitory instability, and that admits employment transitions and losses from self employment. We also present a detailed decomposition of earnings volatility to account for changing shares in employment probabilities, conditional variances of continuous workers, and conditional mean variances from employment entry and exit. Our results show that earnings volatility among men increased by 15% from the early 1970s to mid 1980s, while women's volatility fell, and each stabilized thereafter. However, this pooled series masks important heterogeneity in volatility levels and trends across education groups and marital status. We find that men's earnings volatility is increasingly accounted for by employment transitions, especially exits, while the share of women's volatility accounted for by continuous workers rose, each of which highlights the importance of allowing for periods of non-work in volatility studies.     

Individual and Institutional Investors’ Response to Earnings Reported by Conservative and Non‐Conservative Firms: Evidence from Chinese Financial Markets

In this study, we document that there are significant differences in individual and institutional investors’ perception and interpretation of information based on accounting conservatism, as reflected by their trading behavior in the Chinese financial market. Our findings show that institutional investors, who are more sophisticated and have better skills, engage in higher purchases of equities of firms that use high accounting conservatism compared to the firms that use low/no accounting conservatism. Institutional investors’ equity purchases are even higher if these firms are associated with higher growth opportunities. On the other hand, individual investors are attracted more by the attention‐grabbing events and are motivated to purchase equities of firms that either do not use accounting conservatism or use low accounting conservatism, and their purchases are even higher when the firms report positive earnings surprises. Additionally, we find that abnormal returns are higher for the firms using high accounting conservatism and have experienced higher purchases by institutional investors.     

内部审计质量与盈余管理——来自中国A股制造业上市公司的经验证据

通过对中国A股制造业上市公司2007年至2008年数据的分析,检验了高质量的内部审计质量与低水平的盈余管理间的关系。研究结果表明,内部审计质量与盈余管理抑制之间存在明显的相关性,从而为公司治理对财务报告的重要影响提供了新的经验证据。     

我国上市公司配股盈余管理实证研究

本文对沪市2000～2002年配股上市公司,是否存在盈余管理行为,进行了实证研究,并分析了上市公司为达到配股资格而进行盈余管理的手段,最后提出了规范上市公司盈余管理的对策。     

Rights Issues in the Chinese Stock Market: Evidence of Earnings Management

Using 665 rights offerings of Chinese firms, we demonstrate positive but diminishing price effects of successive announcements at the board meeting, the shareholders' meeting, the prospectus release date, and the ex‐rights date, but negative abnormal returns before the ex‐rights date. Public investors value the participation from shareholders of state and legal‐person shares in the rights offerings, which seem to be linked to the future firm performance. The results overall supports the hypothesis that Chinese company earnings are considerably manipulated in the rights issue process.     

Value Relevance of Multinationality: Evidence from Korean Firms

The purpose of this study is to examine the valuation effects of multinationality in Korean firms and to identify the role of multinationality in internalization theory. We hypothesize that the market positively values the multinational activities of Korean firms, which are operating in a small open economy in which firms have strong motivations for internationalization. We use Ohlson's (1995, Contemporary Accounting Research, 11, 661) value model and document the positive effect for multinational firms compared to domestic firms, as well as the positive effect of multinationality on firm value. These results are robust across studies, as indicated by Tobin's q measure, as well as across years. We also hypothesize that multinationality mediates or moderates the relationship between intangibility and firm value that is proposed in internalization theory. We do not find supporting evidence for a mediated influence of intangibility through multinationality on firm value nor for a moderated influence of intangibility on firm value. We find that multinationality and intangibility directly and independently influence firm value, without any interference from each other. These results are also robust across studies, as indicated by Tobin's q measure. Finally, we find that multinationality in Korean firms has never lost its importance, even during the global financial crisis in the year 2008.