强制性制度变迁与盈余稳健性——来自深沪证券市场的经验证据

本文以1995—2004年深沪两市全部A股上市公司为研究样本,考察会计制度的强制性变迁是否显著提高我国上市公司会计盈余的稳健性。研究结果显示,1995—1997期间上市公司会计盈余不具有稳健性,意在提高上市公司稳健性水平的《股份有限公司会计制度》的实施并未实质性增强1998—2000期间会计盈余的稳健性水平,而更为积极贯彻国际通行的稳健会计政策的《企业会计制度》的实施则显著提升了2001-2004期间我国上市公司会计盈余的稳健性。然而,单独对盈利公司所作的进一步检验却表明,2001—2004期间会计盈余显示的稳健性特征主要是由于亏损公司"洗大澡"造成的。研究结果表明,单纯转变会计准则并不能改善会计信息的质量,除非附以相配套的强有力的法律和执行机制。

Compulsory Institutional Change and Earnings Conservatism: Evidence from Stock Market in China

Using a sample of all listed A-shares firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 1995 to 2004 with available data,this paper examines whether the imposed change of accounting regulations improve significantly the conservatism of the listed firms.We find that conservatism doesn't exist during 1995—1997.The implementation of Accounting System for Share-Capital Enterprises doesn't significantly bring about the improvement of conservatism during 1998—2000,whereas the implementation of Accounting System for Business Enterprises does significantly improve the conservatism of the listed firms during 2001—2004.However,when using the profitable sample data only,conservatism during 2001—2004 disappears,which means that the conservatism's presence results from the big bath behaviour of loss companies.This empirical evidence has shown that changing accounting standards is unlikely to improve accounting information unless there is a corresponding strengthening of laws and enforcement.