自愿披露可以提高财务透明度吗?

Can Voluntary Disclosure Improve Financial Transparency?

基于英美成熟市场的经验证据表明,自愿披露能否提高财务透明度存在"透明观"和"柠檬观"两种截然不同的观点,而强制披露由于可信度较高,因此,能够为自愿披露提供可鉴证性保障。本文的实证结果表明,在我国新兴市场的特殊制度背景下,自愿披露与盈余管理显著负相关,其并没有提高财务透明度,支持了"柠檬观";本文还发现,在具体盈余管理方式上,我国上市公司更多采用了成本较低的线下项目、可操控性应计和关联交易,而非西方各国越来越常见的真实交易;本文最后发现,由于控股股东操纵强制披露的现象普遍存在,导致强制披露质量较低,进而造成公司治理机制功能弱化和效率低下,使得自愿披露的"柠檬效应"更加显著。

Foreign scholars have different opinions on the relationship between voluntary disclosure and finan- cial transparency： a large number of studies have shown that information asymmetry is a necessary condition for earnings management, and voluntary disclosure improves transparency and thus reduces incentives to manage earn- ings because increased transparency helps investors detect earnings management. In addition, managers have incen- tives to make self-serving voluntary disclosures, so some scholars believe that managers would use the signaling effect of voluntary disclosure to confuse investors, which calls ＂lemon view＂. As an emerging market, China is in an idiosyncratic institutional environment characterized by imperfect legislation, inefficient regulatory systems. Under this institutional context, this paper investigates the relationship among voluntary disclosure and earnings quality by selecting a total of 5718 samples,that is,953 companies listed on Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2010. We find the quality of voluntary disclosure was damaged because of weak corporate governance. In this case, companies which disclose more information obtain more resources which even exceed the optimal amount they need. As a result, on the one hand, it offers more resources to controlling shareholders to tunnel the public com- panies. To conceal this behavior, earnings management is likely to increase significantly. On the other hand, the seeming good market image would weaken the supervision of regulators and external investors, which make it more difficult to detect controlling shareholders＇ behavior of tunneling public companies and earnings management. A sig- nificant positive correlation was discovered between voluntary disclosure and earnings management. Furthermore, by analyzing the four earnings management manners： non-operating income, discretionary accruals, related party trans- action and real earnings management activities, this article finds that since the controlling shareholders want to real- ize private benefits of control with the lowest cost, Chinese listed companies tend to adopt the lower-cost non-operat- ing income, discretionary accruals and related party transaction rather than real earnings management activities with higher invisibility cost. We further research whether the compulsory disclosure moderate the relationship between voluntary disclosure and earnings quality. Some foreign scholars argue there can be validation of prior voluntary dis- closures through compulsory disclosure. For example, managers＇ forecasts of revenues and earnings can be verified u- sing actual realizations. However, the quality of compulsory disclosure may be damaged in China. China＇s capital markets have the following two salient features： One is that imperfect legislation and inefficient regulatory make it difficult to detect various disclosure violations, the deterrence force to managements＇ misrepresentation is insuffi- cient, and the enforcement is not enough when punishing the opportunist and protecting the interest of minority shareholders. In addition, because most of China＇s public companies are state-owned enterprises, the government is playing two roles at the same time： the controlling shareholder and the regulator. Therefore, government regulators are not very effective in identifying and prosecuting disclosure fraud because of firm＇ political patronage. This seri- ously damages the effectiveness of compulsory disclosure, which reduce the effectiveness of corporate governance and the quality of voluntary disclosure. The results of this article will help investors to better understand the particularity of listed company voluntary disclosure in emerging markets, prevent investors from being misled by misstatement on one hand, so that investors could learn the present and future trends of listed company＇s management ; on the other, the results have important policy implications.