外部治理环境对盈余质量的影响:自然资源禀赋是“诅咒”吗

The Effect of External Governance Environment on Earnings Quality: Is Natural Resource Endowment Cursing

我国自然资源禀赋和经济发展的区域不平衡,对上市公司的盈余质量产生了重要影响。本文以2003-2 012年沪深两市642家上市公司为样本,采用动态面板数据模型,实证检验了金融、法治和政府干预三个外部治理环境对盈余质量的作用,进一步分析了自然资源禀赋差异对这一作用的影响,并验证"自然资源诅咒"假说是否存在。研究结果表明,金融和法治环境的健康发展和政府干预的减少,有利于提高盈余质量;自然资源禀赋存在地区差异,并通过外部治理环境作用于盈余质量。在外部治理环境对盈余质量的改善作用中,自然资源是"祝福",而不是"诅咒",但这一效应取决于外部治理环境水平。

Both external governance environment and natural resource have played very important roles in improving the corporate governance efficiency. External governance environment provides the institutional base for corporate to make decisions, and natural resource shapes constrains on the external governance environment. However, there are regional differences in external governance environment and natural resource, which will affect earnings quality respectively. For investigating purposes, this paper analyzes the effects of external governance environment on earnings quality using finance, law and governmental governance as three indicators of external governance environments and calculating earnings quality by modified cross selection Jones model based on the dynamic panel data of 642 listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen in China from 2003 to 2012. And further the influences of natural resource endowment difference are discussed, and then the hypothesis of ＂natural resource curse＂ is tested. The results show that both the improvement of financial and law environment and the reduction of governmental intervention are positive to enhance the earnings quality of enterprises. Those effects are not changed by variables of external governance. When natural resource is employed in analysis, there are still positive effects of external governance environment on earnings quality. The natural resource affects earnings quality by the channel of external governance environment. In the process of improving the earnings quality by external governance environment, abundant natural resources are beneficial to earnings quality. The natural resource is ＂blessing＂, not ＂cursing＂ in the area with better external governance environment. But that the effect of natural resource is ＂blessing＂ or ＂cursing＂ depends on the level of external governance environment. At last, we should attach importance to the influences of external governance environment and the constraints of natural resource when improving earnings quality of corporate, in order that the ＂blessing＂ effect of natural resources can be brought. Those research results can enrich the related empirical tests and be helpful to know the different influences of natural resource and external governance environment on earnings quality, and then give reference to official sectors for formulating the relevant polices.