什么决定了利润差异:会计准则还是职业判断?——来自中国A、B股市场的初步证据

What determines Earnings Discrepancy: Accounting standards or professional judgment? ——Preliminary evidence from China's A and B Share reporting

我国资本市场有少量的公司同时发行A股和B股,这部分公司需要提供两套财务报表,分别遵循了国内会计准则和国际会计准则。我们以我国会计制度改革的特定时期(1998-2000)为背景,以同时发行A、B 股的公司为样本,经过研究发现,那些同时发行A、B股公司所报告的净利润差异,主要不是来自会计准则,而是来自于会计职业判断;而会计职业判断背后的经济动机在于上市公司为了达到保牌的目的。我们的研究丰富了有关会计准则与会计信息质量之间关系的研究。

There are quite a few firms issuing both A shares and B shares and traded in domestic capital market, or A share market, and restricted market, or B share market simultaneously. According to the requirement, these firms have to prepare two set of annual reports under Chinese Accounting Standards (CAS) and International Accounting Standards (IAS) respectively. It is widely accepted that the standards difference is minimum during 1998 - 2000 so we examine the reporting earnings discrepancy between the given period. Our empirical evidence shows that it is the professional judgments, instead of accounting standards, which drove the reporting earnings discrepancy between A share reporting and B share reporting. We further analyze the incentive for management to make the biased judgment. This paper support the conjecture raised by Ball (1995 ) that international accounting standards does not necessarily improve accounting information quality.