会计信息质量与公司资本配置效率——来自我国上市公司的经验证据

Accounting Information Quality and Capital Allocation Efficiency:Empirical Evidence of Chinese Listed Corporations

高质量会计信息能通过改善契约和监督,降低道德风险和逆向选择,从而提高公司资本配置效率,但至今仍未出现针对我国上市公司的经验证据。结合我国新兴加转轨的制度背景,以我国沪深上市公司为研究样本,实证结果表明:会计信息质量与上市公司投资不足和过度显著负相关,其中应计质量和盈余平滑性与上市公司投资不足和过度间的负相关性最为显著。因此,我们应该完善我国上市公司财务报告和披露系统的市场基础设施,如机构投资者和分析师队伍等,进一步进行制度创新以更好发挥会计信息在公司资本配置中的作用。

Accounting information quality can be associated with corporate capital allocation efficiency in at least two ways. On one hand, high quality accounting information mitigates adverse selection costs by reducing the information asymmetry between the firm and investors, and among investors; on the other hand, high quality accounting information reduces agency problems between shareholders and management, which can then improve investment efficiency by increasing shareholder ability to monitor managers and thus improve project selection and reduce financing costs. Thus high quality accounting information can reduce both adverse selection and moral hazard by improving contracting and monitoring, and thus improve corporate capital allocation efficiency, but there has been little empirical evidence supporting this claim to date for our listed corporations. With the emerging and transitional institutional background of China, first we self-construct a composite proxy for accounting information quality using a simply averaged decile rank value methodology by three accounting-based attributes： accruals quality, conservatism and earnings smoothness using classic models such as Dechow ＆ Dichev （2002） model, Ball ＆ Shivakumar（2005） model and Jones（1991） model; second we construct corporate underinvestment and overinvestment as a proxy for corporate capital allocation efficiency using Richardson（2006）model; finally consistent with our hypothesis, we find proxies for accounting information quality are negatively associated with both corporate underinvestment and overinvestment of our listed corporation. In addition, in the negative relation between specific accounting information quality and corporate underinvestment and overinvestment, accruals quality and earnings smoothness are most significant. Therefore, we should develop our infrastructure for an economically efficient system of public financial reporting and disclosure, such as institutional investors and analysts, and further make systematic innovation to take accounting information＇s role of allocating capital better. Of course, we also put forward some problems such as measures of Accounting information quality and corporate capital allocation efficiency, which need us to further study.