CFO首次入职时经济状况的烙印效应与会计信息质量

Imprinting Effect of Economic Conditions on CFOs’Judgment and Accounting Information Quality

本文选取1999—2015年A股上市公司为研究样本,检验了财务总监(CFO)首次入职时经济状况对企业盈余管理行为的影响。研究发现,CFO首次入职时经济状况较差的公司相对于其他公司具有更低的盈余管理程度;在进行一系列稳健检验后,上述结果依然存在。此外,我们发现公司所有权性质、市场化进程和股权分置改革会对CFO首次入职时经济状况的烙印效应产生影响。上述结果表明,首次入职时的经济状况会促使CFO发展出相应的行为特征,在其职业生涯中持续发挥作用,并影响就职公司的会计信息质量。

In this paper,we concern about whether the economic conditions of the year when CFOs start their career will affect accounting information quality.Taking A-share listed companies in Shenzhen and Shanghai stock markets from 1999 to 2015 as the sample,we find that the companies with CFOs who started their career during economic downturns take less earnings management.We conduct a series of robustness tests,including:(1)separating upward earnings management and downward earnings management;(2)introducing the Heckman two-stage model,PSM sample and firm fixed effect;(3)using alternative variables for accounting information quality and economic conditions.The results are robust through the above tests.Further analysis finds that the rapidly changing economic conditions will gradually adjust the initial behavior characteristics of CFOs,so the CFOs who started their career earlier are less affected by the economic conditions at that time.In addition,the nature of company ownership,marketization process and share-trading reform will affect this relationship.Specifically,the variance in the two groups’earnings management is significant before the share reform,for the state-owned enterprises,and in the low-marketized area.Our paper provides a new perspective to observe CFOs’characteristics based on the imprinting effect of the economic conditions of the year when CFOs start their career and sheds lights on the determinants of accounting information quality.