“反向混改”与民营企业盈余管理

Reverse Mixed Ownership Reform and Earnings Management of Private Listed Companies

“反向混改”不仅意味着民营企业股权结构的变化,而且可能产生资源效应和治理效应,从而影响企业经营活动。本文利用初始产权性质为民营企业的A股非金融类上市公司2007-2020年数据,以前十大股东中国有股东持股比例及其是否超过10%来度量反向混改,以微利或资产报酬率微增度量盈余管理倾向,进而考察反向混改对盈余管理倾向的影响,结果发现,反向混改与盈余管理倾向之间呈显著正向关系。机制性检验表明,反向混改对盈余管理的促进作用可以部分地归结为政企关系的加强。异质性检验表明,反向混改对盈余管理的促进作用仅存在于市场化水平较低、政府干预程度较高、民营经济发展环境较差地区,且主要来自于国有非金融类机构的入股。基于具体盈余管理手段的进一步检验表明,反向混改企业主要通过非经常性项目而不是应计盈余管理手段来向上操纵盈余。这一研究有助于更深入地理解不同性质的股权对盈余管理的影响,并有助于加深对反向混改后果的理解。

"Reverse mixed ownership reform"of private enterprises not only brings the changes of equity structure but also brings resource effects and governance effects.Therefore,reverse mixed ownership reform(introduction of state-owned capital)will affect the business operations of private enterprises.Some literature has examined the impact of reverse mixed reform on the financing constraints and corporate performance of private enterprises,but it is unknown whether"reverse mixed ownership reform"affects the enterprises'propensity of earnings management and how it realizes that.Using the data from 2007 to 2020 of A-share non-financial listed companies that are private enterprises when they went public,this paper explores the impact of reverse mixed ownership reform on the earnings management propensity of private listed companies.Reverse mixed ownership reform is measured by the ratio of state shareholding among the top ten shareholders and whether the state-owned shareholders hold more than 10%of the shares.The authors use the earnings distribution method to measure the private company's earnings management tendency.Specifically,the company is defined as earnings management suspect company if it reports a small profit or a slight increase in ROA over the previous year.Small profit is defined as the ROA of certain company which is between O and 0.01,and small ROA increase is defined as the change of ROA which is between O and 1 percent.The baseline logit regression results show that there is a significant positive relationship between reverse mixed ownership reform and earnings management tendency.The authors alleviate the endogeneity problem by using instrumental variable two-stage regression,treatment effect model,PSM+DID,etc.and the results remain the same.The results remain unchanged when we also use alternative measures of reverse mixed ownership reform and change the definition of earnings management propensity.Such findings demonstrate that the entering of state-owned capital into private enterprises(reverse mixed-ownership reform)will not inhibit the earnings management behavior of private listed companies.On the contrary,it will promote the earnings management behavior of private enterprises.The results of mechanism tests show that the introduction of state-owned capital is helpful to strengthen the government-enterprise relationship of private enterprises,and there is a substitution relationship between the reverse mixed reform and the political relationship of enterprise's executives.It can be inferred that the positive relationship between the reverse mixed reform and earnings management can be attributed to a certain extent that the entry of state-owned capital can provide support for the earnings management behavior of private enterprises.The results of heterogeneity tests demonstrate that the positive effect of reverse mixed-ownership reform on earnings management is more profound in companies which are located in areas with lower level of marketization,higher degree of government intervention,and poorer environment for private economic development.Further tests demonstrate that the positive effect of reverse mixed reform in promoting earnings management of private enterprises mainly comes from non-financial state-owned institutions.The authors further examine the effect of reverse mixed ownership reform on accrual earnings management and non-recurring profit and loss.The results show that there is no significant relationship between reverse mixed ownership reform and positive accrual earnings management,but it has a significant positive relationship with income-increasing non-recurring gains and losses.The result of mediation test shows that reverse mixed ownership reform companies partially meet the earnings threshold through income-increasing non-recurring profit and loss items.Such results demonstrate that the reverse mixed-ownership reform enterprises would achieve the earnings target through non-recurring items which are less risky than accrual earnings management.This paper contributes to deeper understanding of the impact of property rights of different natures on earnings management and helps to the understanding of the consequences of reverse mixed-ownership reform.The findings of this paper on the positive relationship between reverse mixed ownership reform and earnings management show that reverse mixed ownership reform may have dark sides if the state-owned capital does not play a governance role actively.