盈余管理对企业年度报告可读性的影响研究

The Impact of Earnings Management on the Readability of Annual Reports

企业年度报告作为向利益相关者传递信息的重要媒介,利益相关者对年报信息的理解,会直接影响资本市场上对资源配置的效率。近年来,证监会对《公开发行证券的公司信息披露内容与格式准则第2号——年度报告的内容与格式》不断修改,可以看出,年报的非财务信息越来越受到重视,这种现象也给予管理层更多的空间对年报进行印象管理以混淆读者视线。因为有管理层印象管理因素的存在,研究年报的复杂程度具有一定的现实意义。随之,可读性在公司报告领域的运用越来越广,可读性,顾名思义,简单地说是一篇文章的阅读难度。国外学者研究了公司业绩、外部审计身份、公司治理、公司规模、股票收益等因素会对年报可读性有影响,而针对年报可读性的国内研究目前较少,且尚无针对中文年报的大样本研究。如Li在2008年在美国市场上发现年报可读性与公司绩效之间的正相关关系。但造成此正相关关系的原因尚未清楚,是由于管理层蓄意操纵导致还是亏损公司的信息本身就比较难以理解?另外,国内市场是否也有这种现象?在此基础上,文章与Li的研究一样采用FOG公式作为衡量可读性的公式,创新地使用电脑编程方式得出中文文本的FOG指数以衡量中文年报的可读性,并且在国内市场选取大量中文年报为样本。由于盈余管理代表这一定程度得管理层操纵程度,文章利用盈余管理与年报可读性的关系预测此正相关关系一定程度上是由于管理层蓄意混淆年报阅读者对年报的理解。同时使用年报是否进行财务重述指标作为管理层人为操纵的补充,以期用财务重述与年报可读性的关系更充分地证明我们的结论。文章利用Stata进行面板数据回归,最终结果显示盈余管理程度与财务重述都与年报可读性呈现显著负相关。由上述研究结论可知,年报可读性与公司业绩的正相关关系在一定程度上是由于管理层蓄意操纵年报导致的。因此,通过阅读年报读者可以比较不同公司或者相同公司不同时间的年报的复杂程度,可以大概感受出此公司的业绩高低以及此年报是否经过管理层对年报文本的人为操纵。

As an important medium for transmitting information to stakeholders,the stakeholders’understanding of annual reports will directly affect the efficiency of resource allocation in the capital market.In recent years,the CSRC has continuously revised Guidelines for Content and Format of the Information Disclosure of Companies That Offer Securities to the Public No.2--Content and Format of Annual Report.It can be seen the annual reports of enterprises are increasingly valued,especially for their non-financial information.This phenomenon also gives management more room to manage the impression of the annual report to confuse the readers.Because of the existence of impression management factors,the researches on the complexity of annual reports have certain practical significance.As a result,readability is becoming more widely used in the researches on corporate reporting because the non-financial information is made up of textual language.So readability becomes the essential way to measure its complexity.Readability,as the name suggests,is simply the difficulty of reading an article.Through study,foreign scholars think that a company’s performance,external auditing identity,corporate governance,company size,stock returns and other factors will have an impact on the readability of the annual report,while domestic research on the readability of the annual report is currently rare.For instance,in2008,Li found the positive correlation between the readability of the annual report and the company’s performance.However,the reason for this positive correlation is not clear.Is it because the management deliberately manipulates the information or the loss-making company itself is more difficult to understand?In addition,is there such a phenomenon in the domestic market?Based on that,this paper uses the same FOG formula with that in Li’s research,but selects the Chinese annual reports as samples.By using the computer programming,we use the relationship between the earnings management and annual report to predict this positive correlation is partly due to management’s deliberate confusion about the readers’understanding of the annual report because the earnings management represents a certain degree of management manipulation.In addition,by using financial restatement indicators as a supplement to earnings management,we expect to prove more fully that the positive correlation between annual report readability and company performance is largely due to management’s deliberate confusion.The article uses Stata to perform panel data regression.The final results show that the degree of earnings management and financial restatement are significantly negatively correlated with the readability of the annual report.From the above research conclusions,the positive correlation between the readability of the annual report and the company’s performance is partly due to the management’s deliberate manipulation of the annual report.Therefore,by reading the annual report,readers can compare the complexity of the annual reports of different companies or the same company at different times,then they can probably presume the performance of the company and whether the annual report has been manipulated by the management concerning the text.