规模、控制人性质与盈余管理

Firm Size, Controller Properties and Earnings Management

规模大小是否影响企业的盈余管理行为?前期文献对这个问题的研究一直局限于对应计项目盈余管理的考察,本文在前期文献研究的基础上,将视角扩展到近年来国际学术界研究较多的真实活动盈余操控方式,并基于中国的制度背景提出了新的规模—盈余管理假说,即相对于小公司来说,规模大的公司应计盈余管理程度更低,真实活动盈余管理程度更高;企业的国有股权性质将会促使这种效应更为显著。我们基于中国上市公司的经验分析支持上述理论预期。本文在一定程度上拓展了对规模—盈余管理这一问题的研究,并对公司治理的改善有一定的借鉴意义。

Whether firm size affects the earnmgs management behavior？ Preliminary literature on the study of this problem is confined to the accruals earnings management, and research on Chinese listed companies has long stagnated in the testing of size - political cost hypothesis. On the basis of previous literature about accruals earnings management, this paper extends to the real activities earnings management--the fiercer field studied by aca- demia in the past few years. Moreover, this paper puts forward new size-earnings management hypothesis based on Chinese system background： relative to small companies, large companies have a lower degree of accruals earnings management, yet have a higher degree of real activities earnings management, and enterprise＇s state-owned equity nature makes this effect more significant. Based on Chinese listed companies, the empirical research con- firms the hypothesis： With the scale of the companies increasing, top managers have strong incentive to reduce the use of accruals earnings management, and increase real earnings management level. In accruals earnings management aspect, state-owned hold- ing companies are no significant difference from non-state-owned holding companies, but state-owned holding companies obviously increase real earnings management level. Among sales manipula- tion, production manipulation, discretionary expenditure manipu- lation, it mainly reflects in manipulating discretionary expenditure. Large-scale enterprises tend to manipulate earnings in real activi- ties earnings management, as a result, on the one hand, enterprises can obtain government subsidies, bank loans, tax breaks; at the same time, top managers can be promoted higher political status. but it seriously damage long-term interests of the company, this may be one of important reasons why many companies are big, but not strong. The results mean that regulators not only need to supervise accruals earnings management behaviors, but also they should pay more attention to the real activities earnings management behaviors of large-scale enterprise, especially large-scale state-owned enterprises.