代理成本、所有权性质与业绩预告精确度

Agency Cost, Ownership Nature and Management Forecast Precision

本文考察了代理成本和业绩预告精确度之间的关系,并且进一步考察企业所有权性质对代理成本与业绩预告精确度关系的影响,以此探讨信息不对称和产权性质于信息披露质量的作用。研究发现,代理成本越高,业绩预告的精确越低;相比非国有企业,第一类代理成本高的国有企业更可能披露预测精确度较差的业绩预告,研究结果支持了"攫取"假说。本文为我国进一步发展证券市场监管体制和建立透明公开的投资环境提供重要的实证证据。

Using management fee as proxy of the first agency cost and other receivables as proxy of the second agency cost, meanwhile taking account of ownership nature, based on the management annual and semiannual earnings pre-announcement of 2005-2012 non-financial A-share listed companies, this article examines the relationship between agency cost and management forecast precision to deepen our understanding of the role of corporate governance in information disclosure. The empirical results indicate that forecast precision is negatively related to two agency costs. In addition, SOE is more likely to issue earnings forecast with low-precision forecast when the agency cost between shareholder and management is high; However, there is no significant difference for the relationship between management earnings forecast and the second agency cost. Overall, the findings of this paper support grabbing hypotheses. That is, management is inclined to report much lower earnings forecast in order to hide the agency problem and maximize self-interests. In order to test robustness of the findings, firstly, we redefine the proxy of the two agency costs： total assets turnover as proxy of the first agency cost and Hirshmann-Herfindahl index of the top five shareholders＇ shareholding as proxy of the second agency cost, and the results is consistent. Secondly, in order to eliminate endogenousness of management earnings forecast, we choose data sample of mandatory disclosure of management earnings forecast, and the results is robust. Further, we use point forecast sample to test our hypotheses, and we get the same findings. In sum, our findings are robustness. This paper provides insights into determinants of management earn- ings forecast characteristics and the empirical evidences on Chinese listed firms＇ disclosure behavior in current regulation environment. To our knowledge, the paper is the first test the relationship between the two agency costs and management earnings forecast and consider the moderate effect of ownership nature. Our research enriches the literature of management earnings forecast and is instructive and meaningful to policymakers about earnings forecast system.