上市公司审计委员会有效性与会计盈余质量研究——基于“有效需求假说”与“机会主义行为假说”的比较分析

The Incentive Effect of Audit Committee and Earnings Quality——Based on the Comparison of Effective Demand and Opportunism Hypotheses

"有效需求假说"把审计委员会制度看成重要的公司治理机制,这一专门委员会的有效运行可以协调股东和高管的利益冲突,实现股东财富最大化。"机会主义行为假说"则认为,高管对董事会治理的格局安排产生影响,可以利用自身权力以多种方式进行寻租。本文从"有效需求假说"和"机会主义行为假说"出发,结合我国的制度背景,考察我国上市公司设立审计委员会的动机,并进一步检验审计委员会的运行对会计盈余质量的影响。以2001年至2008年深沪两市的上市公司作为研究样本进行实证分析,结果发现,本文提供的经验证据基本支持"机会主义行为假说",同时也在一定程度上与"有效需求假说"的预期相符。这表明"有效需求假说"和"机会主义行为假说"并不是严格对立的。进一步的研究发现,上市公司设立审计委员会以后,会计盈余质量并没有得到显著改善。

The＂ demand＇hypothesis, viewing audit committee as an important part of corporate governance mechanism, holds that firms with greater agency costs are more likely to have an audit committee. In comparison, the＂opportunistic behavior＂ hypothesis predicts that the bargaining power of the CEO relative to the rest of the board of directors will determine the level of composition of the board and the extent of board monitoring. We examine the causes and consequences of finns＇ vo｜untarily adoption of the audit committee, using a sample of China firms from 2001 to 2008 when no regulations or listing rules existed for audit committees and empirically investigate the validity of these two hypotheses and further compare the quality of accounting numbers produced by finns with and without an audit committee. After controlling for various other factors, we find that the＂ demand＂ and＂ opportunistic behavior＇are not mntually exclusive and they both can have some degrees of explaining the adoption of the audit committee,and finns with an audit committee have not higher quality earnings than firms without.