文化对财务重述行为的影响研究

The effect of culture on financial restatement

本文使用2002-2011年间来自38个国家和地区的跨国数据,检验了文化对财务重述的影响,并考虑了投资者保护对这种影响的作用。研究发现:相对于集体主义,个人主义文化更容易滋生财务重述;不确定性规避程度较高的国家或地区,发生财务重述的概率较低;但权力距离对财务重述的作用方向尚不明朗。个人主义对财务重述的正向影响作用在投资者保护水平较好时会更为明显;不确定性规避抑制财务重述的作用在投资者保护较好的制度下会有所增强。本文为理解文化在影响财务报告重述方面提供经验支持。

Culture can affect many aspects of one country or area to some extent, including legal system and corporate governance. This paper discusses and analyzes the effect of culture on the incidence of financial restatement. Based on data from 38 countries and areas during the period between 2002 and 2011, this paper examines the impact of culture on financial restatement, while considering investor protection. By concluding and analyzing related theories, this paper adopts Hofstede＇s（2001） three national culture dimensions： individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance. Besides, investor protection is based on La Porta et al.＇s（1998） study. By using data and several statistical methods, we find that： Firstly, probit regressions analysis results indicate that compared with collectivism, individualism is more likely to lead to financial restatement. Countries or areas with high uncertainty avoidance have lower incidence of financial restatement. However, the effect of power distance on financial restatement is not clear. By using the weighted logistic regression method, we obtain the same results. Secondly, we intend to examine whether the effect of culture on the incidence of financial restatement depends on investor protection. This paper finds that investor protection indeed moderates the effect of culture on financial restatement. Specifically, probit regression analysis results indicate that the positive effect of individualism on the incidence of financial restatement is much more pronounced when investor is protected. The negative effect of uncertainty avoidance on the incidence of financial restatement is strengthened when investor protection is better. The results require additional analysis. Our findings suggest that the overall effect ofculture on the probability of financial restatements may diverge due to different settings and situations, such as different investor protection levels. This paper helps enrich and complete the research content of national culture and financial restatement. This paper not only helps extend culture related theories and literatures to reduce the incidence of financial restatement, but also improves our understanding of the combined effect of national culture and other settings in reducing agency cost. Moreover, our findings can help multinational corporations effectively make rules in dealing with firms from other countries and areas under different investor protection levels.