盈余管理：一种普遍现象外文翻译（可编辑）

盈余管理：一种普遍现象外文翻译（可编辑） 盈余管理:一种普遍现象外文翻译 外文翻译 Earnings Management:A Perspective Material Source: Managerial Finance Author:Messod D.Beneish Abstract An issue central to accounting research is the extent to which managers alter reported earnings for their own benefit. In the 1970s and early 1980s, a large number of studies investigated the determinants of accounting choice. These studies provided evidence consistent with managers’ incentives to choose beneficial ways of reporting earnings in regulatory and contractual contexts see Holthausen and Leftwich, 1983, and Watts and Zimmerman, 1986 for reviews of these studies. Since the mid-1980s studies of managerial incentives to alter earnings have focused primarily on accruals. I trace the explosive growth in accrual-based management research to three likely causes. First accruals are the principal product of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and if earnings are managed it is more likely that the earnings management occurs on the accrual rather than the cash flow component of earnings. Second, studying accruals reduces the problems associated with the inability to measure the effect of various accounting choices on earnings Watts and Zimmerman, 1990. Third, if earnings management is an unobservable component of accruals, it is less likely that investors can unravel the effect of earnings management on reported earnings. The main challenge faced by earnings management researchers is that academics, like investors, are unable to observe, or for that matter, measure the earnings management component of accruals. Indeed, managerial accounting actions intended to increase compensation, avoid covenant default, raise capital, or influence a regulatory outcome are largely unobservable. Consequently, prior work has drawn inferences from joint hypotheses that test both incentives to manage earnings as well as the construct validity of the various accrual models which are used to estimate managers’ accounting discretion. Because extant models of expected accruals provide imprecise estimates of managerial discretion, questions have been raised about whether the unobservable earnings management actions do in fact occur. Notwithstanding research design problems, a variety of evidence suggestive of earnings management has accumulated. In Section 2, I raise three general questions about earnings management: What is it? How frequently does it occur? How do researchers estimate earnings management? Prior investigations of managerial incentives to alter earnings typically fall in three categories, namely studies that examine the effect of contracts in accounting choices, and studies that examine the incentive effects associated with the need to raise external financing. Rather than discussing the evidence along those lines, I have chosen to present the evidence depending on the direction of the incentive context. Thus, I summarize in Sections 3 and 4, what is known about incentives to increase and decrease earnings. In Section 5, I discuss evidence on incentive contexts that provide incentives either to increase or to decrease earnings, and in Section 6, I present conclusions and suggestions for future work. 2. Earnings Management 2.1 Definitions Notice the plural: It reflects my view that academics have no consensus on what is earnings management. There have been at least three attempts at defining earnings management: 1 Managing earnings is “the process of taking deliberate steps within the constraints of generally accepted accounting principles to bring about a desired level of reported earnings.” Davidson, Stickney and Weil, 1987,cited in Schipper, 1989. 2 Managing earnings is “a purposeful intervention in the external financial reporting process, with the intent of obtaining some private gain as opposed to say, merely facilitating the neutral operation of the process.” Schipper, 1989. 3 “Earnings management occurs when managers use judgment in financial reporting and in structuring transactions to alter financial reports to either mislead some stakeholders about the underlying economic performance of the company or to influence contractual outcomes that depend on reported accounting numbers.” Healy and Wahlen, 1999. A lack of consensus on the definition of earnings management implies differing interpretations of empirical evidence in studies that seek to detect earnings management, or to provide evidence of earnings management incentives. It is thus useful to compare the above three definitions. All three definitions deal with actions management undertaken within the context of financial reporting - including the structuring of transactions so that a desired accounting treatment applies e.g. pooling, operating leases. However, the second definition also allows earnings management to occur via timing real investment and financing decisions. If the timing issue delays or accelerates a discretionary expenditure for a very short period of time around the firm’s fiscal year, I envision timing real decisions as a means of managing earnings. A problem with the second definition arises if readers interpret any real decisions - including those implying that managers forego profitable opportunities ? as earnings management. Given the availability of alternative ways to manage earnings, I believe it is implausible to call earnings management a deviation from rational investment behavior. This reflects my view that earnings management is a financial reporting phenomenon. There are two perspectives on earnings management: the opportunistic perspective holds that managers seek to mislead investors, and the information perspective, first enunciated by Holthausen and Leftwich 1983, under which managerial discretion is a means for managers to reveal to investors their private expectations about the firm’s future cash flows. Much prior work has predicated its conclusions on an opportunistic perspective for earnings management and has not tested the information perspective. 2.2 Incidence of earnings management If one believes former SEC Chairman Levitt 1998, earnings management is widespread, at least among public companies, as they face pressure to meet analysts’ expectations. Earnings management is also widespread if one relies on analytical arguments. For example, Bagnoli and Watts 2000 suggest that the existence of relative performance evaluation leads firms to manage earnings if they expect competitor firms to manage earnings. Similar prisoner’s dilemma-like arguments for the existence of earnings management appear in Erickson and Wang 1999 in the context of mergers and Shivakumar 2000 in the context of seasoned equity offerings. At the other extreme, we can only be certain that earnings have indeed been managed, when the judicial system, in cases that are brought by the SEC or the Department of Justice, resolves that earnings management has occurred. While it is likely that earnings management occurs more frequently than is observed from judicial actions, it is not clear to me that earnings management is pervasive: it seems implausible that firms face the same motivations to manage earnings over time. As later discussed, much of the evidence of earnings management is dependent on firm performance, suggesting that earnings management is more likely to be present when a firm’s performance is either unusually good or unusually bad. 3. Evidence of Income Increasing Earnings Management I discuss four sources of incentives for income increasing earnings management: 1 debt contracts, 2 compensation agreements, 3 equity offerings, 4 insider trading. The first two sources have been hypothesized in prior positive accounting theory research and the last two sources are explicitly described as reasons behind earnings overstatement in the SEC’s accounting enforcement actions, and have been investigated in recent research. 3.1 Debt Covenants Debt contracts are an important theme in financial accounting research as lenders often use accounting numbers to regulate firms’ activities,e,g. by requiring that certain performance objectives be met or imposing limits to allowed investing and financing activities. The linkage between accounting numbers and debt contracts has been used in studies investigation i why economic consequences are observed when firms comply with mandated, or voluntarily make, accounting changes that have no cash flow impact, ii the determinants of accounting choice and managers’ exercise of discretion over accounting estimates that impact net income. The assumption is that debt covenants provide incentives for managers to increase earnings either to reduce the restrictiveness of accounting based constraints in debt agreements or to avoid the costs of covenant violations. The results of economic consequences studies have generally been mixed and researchers recently turned to investigating accounting choice in firms that experience actual technical default Beneish and Press, 1993, 1995; Sweeney, 1994; Defond and Jiambalvo, 1994;and De Angelo, De Angelo and Skinner, 1994. The idea is to increase the power of the tests by focusing on a sample where the effect of violating debt covenants is likely to be more noticeable. While some of the evidence suggests that managers take income increasing actions delay the onset of default Sweeney, 1994; Defond and Jiambalvo, 1994, other evidence does not Beneish and Press,1993; DeAngelo,DeAngelo and Skinner,1994. Further, it is not clear such actions actually are sufficient to delay default. Thus, the evidence in these studies on whether managers make income increasing accounting choices to avoid default is mixed. However, examining a large sample of private debt agreements, and measuring firms’ closeness to current ratio and tangible net worth constraints, Dichev and Skinner 2000 find significantly greater proportions of firms slightly above the covenant’s violation threshold than below. They suggest that managers take actions consistent with avoiding covenant default. 3.2 Compensation Agreements Studies examining the bonus hypothesis Healy, 1985;Gaveretal, 1995; and Holthausen, Larker and Sloan, 1995 provide evidence consistent with managers altering reported earnings to increase their compensation. Except for Healy 1985, these studies provide evidence consistent with managers decreasing reported earnings to increase future compensation. In addition, Holthausen et al. 1995 finds little evidence that managers increase income and suggest that the income-increasing evidence in Healy 1985 is induced by his experimental design. 3.3 Equity Offerings A growing body of research examines managers’ incentives to increase reported income in the context of security offerings. Information asymmetry between owners-managers and investors, particularly at the time of initial public offerings, is recognized in prior research. Models such as Leland and Pyle 1977 suggest that the amount of equity retained by insiders signals their private valuation, and models such as Hughes 1986, Titman and Trueman 1986, and Datar et al. 1991 examine the role of the reputation of the auditor on the offer price. In these models, the asymmetry is resolved by the choice of an outside certifier or by a commitment to a contract that penalizes the issuer for untruthful disclosure. Empirical studies assume that information asymmetry remains and use various models to estimate managers’ exercise of discretion over accruals at the time of security offerings. Four studies investigate earnings management as an explanation for the puzzling behavior of post-issuance stock prices. Teoh, Welch and Rao 1998 and Teoh, Welch and Wong 1998a study earnings management in the context of initial public offerings IPO, and Rangan 1998 and Teoh, Welch and Wong 1998b do so in the context of seasoned equity offerings. These studies estimate the extent of earnings management using Jones like models around the time of the security issuance, and correlate their earnings management estimates with post-issue earnings and returns. The evidence presented suggests that estimates of at-issue earnings management are significantly negatively correlated with subsequent earnings and returns performance. The results in these studies suggest that market participants fail to understand the valuation implications of unexpected accruals. While the results are compelling, the conclusion that intentional earnings management at the time of security issuance successfully misleads investors is premature. Beneish 1998b, p.210 expresses reservations about generalizing such a conclusion as follows: “First, the conclusion implies that financial statement fraud is pervasive at the time of issuance. To explain; fraud is defined by the National Association of Certified Fraud Examiners 1993, p.6 as one or more intentional acts designed to deceive other persons and cause them financial loss." If financial statement fraud at issuance is pervasive - e.g. managers are successful in misleading investors. I would expect that firms would fare poorly post-issuance in terms of litigation brought about by the Securities and Exchange Commission SEC, disgruntled investors, and the plaintiff’s bar. I would also expect managers to fare poorly post-issuance in terms of wealth and employment. I would find evidence of post-issue consequences on firms and managers informative about the existence of at-issue intentional earnings management to mislead investors and believe these issues are worthy of future research. 译文 盈余管理:一种普遍现象 资料来源: 财务管理 作者:Messod D. Beneish 摘要: 会计研究的核心问题是在某种程度上管理者为了自己的利益而改变报 上的收入。在20世纪70年代和80年代初,大量的研究探讨了对会计决策的选择。 这些研究提供的证据与管理人员的激励机制相一致,选择有利的环境法规和 的方式盈利(Holthausen, Leftwich 1983)。自80年代中期的管理激励机制研究表明,改变盈利的方式主要集中在权责发生制。 1 引言 我找到了以权责发生制为基础的爆炸性增长的管理研究中的三个可能的原因。第一,预提费用是GAPP的主要产物,并且,如果对会计盈余进行管理,它更可能是盈余管理上的权责发生,而不是现金收入的组成部分。第二,学习预提费用的减少所带来的问题无法衡量各种会计选择对盈利的影响。第三,假如盈余管理是权责发生中难以觉察的部分,它不太可能让投资者了解盈余管理报告收益的影响。 盈余管理的研究者所面临的主要挑战是那些学者,例如投资者,他们不可能发现,或为此事,测量盈余管理中预提费用的组成部分。事实上,管理会计的行为旨在增加补偿,避免契约默认情况下,筹集资本,或影响其监管的成果在很大程度上难以发现。因此,可推断出前期工作是由联合假说产生,并且检验同时鼓励盈余管理以及建构效度的各种收益模型,并用于评估管理者的会计谨慎。由于现存的应计项目模型提供了管理会计的估计不准确性,并提出事实上盈余管理的行为是否难以观察的问题。 尽管研究的问题,各种证据表明盈余管理已经发展了。在第二段,我列举了三个盈余管理的主要问题:它是什么?它发生的频率如何?研究者如何估计盈余管理?管理动机的早期研究改变了盈余,特别是以下三类,即研究审查会计选择的合同效力,审查其需要的相关动机,以提高外部融资。本论文并不是讨论这三类问题,我选择了盈余管理的动机方面进行阐述。这样,我在第三、四部分总结,了解什么是盈余减少或增加的动机。在第五部分,我论证了动机证据的相关联系, 无论增加或减少收入。在第六部分,结尾以及未来工作的建议。 2 盈余管理 2.1 定义 注意点:涉及到我认为的盈余管理的观点,而专家学者并没有达成共识的。他们对盈余管理的定义存在至少三个方面。 (1)盈余管理是盈余管理是在公认会计准则许可的范围内,通过会计政策选择使经营者自身利益或公司市场价值达到最大化的行为。 (2)盈余管理是企业管理者为了达到其目的,有目的的干预对外财务报表。 (3)盈余管理发生在企业管理者为了改变财务报告中的判断和交易结构并且误导利益相关者,而改变会计报告上的数字。 盈余管理发生在当管理者在编制财务报告和构建经济交易时,运用判断改变财务报告,从而误导一些利益相关者对公司根本经济收益的理解,或者影响根据报告中会计数据形成的契约结果。(Healy , Wahlen, 1999) 盈余管理的定义缺少一个共识,这意味着不同的研究,旨在检测盈余管理经验证据的解释,或提供证据表明盈余管理的动机。因此,比较以上三个定义对本论文的论述是有帮助的。 以上三个定义是在财务报告的背景下操作盈余管理的范围,包括结构化的交易,适用于所需的会计处理方法。但是,第二个定义也可以投资的时间安排和财务决策进行盈余管理。如果时间问题推迟或加快了该公司财务年度内短时期的人意之处,因此,我设想的时间对盈余管理有着决定性的作用。第二个定义的问题在于读者是否理解其真正的决定,包括管理人员放弃可以使公司有盈利的机会, 作为盈余管理。鉴于盈余管理还有其他的方式,我相信盈余管理从理性的投资行为偏差是不真实的。这些都反映了盈余管理是财务报告的现象。 盈余管理目前有两个方向,一个是机会主义的观点,即管理者试图误导投资者;另一个是信息主义的观点,Holthausen, Leftwich 1983首先提出,盈余管理的动机是管理者私自向投资者透露关于公司的未来现金流量。很多以前以盈余管理机会主义为结论的论文,都不符合信息观。 2.2盈余管理的影响范围 美国证券交易委员会前任主席Levitt 1998提出,盈余管理是非常普遍的,至少在上市公司中,是在为了达到师期望的压力下产生的。盈余管理同时普遍存在于一个依靠参数分析的公司中。例如,Bagnoli, Watts 2000提出,相对绩效评估的存在迫使那些希望竞争对手能够做到盈余管理的公司自己也要做好盈余管理工作。盈余管理的类似情况还出现在Erickson, Wang 1999提出的合并财务报表,以及Shivakumar 2000提出的增发股票。 在另一方面,我们也能确定盈余管理是有必要的,当司法系统在由美国证券交易委员会或司法部提出相关解决方法时,盈余管理已经产生了。虽然盈余管理行为有大部分不能被司法机关发现,但这对我来说盈余管理的普遍性并不是很清楚,这似乎难以置信,但是随着时间的推移,公司在面临相同的动机时,往往进行盈余管理。最后讨论的是,很多证据证明,盈余管理依靠公司的绩效,这表明盈余管理存在于公司业绩很好或很坏的情况下。 3 盈余管理实证研究 我将讨论增加收入盈余管理的激励四个方面:(1)债务合同,(2)补偿协议,(3)股票发行。假设首先有两个来源在以往实证会计理论研究和最后两个来源 是明确描述为多报盈利背后的原因美国证券交易委员会的会计执法行动,并已在最近的调查研究。 3.1 债务契约 债务合同是在财务会计研究的重要主题,贷款人往往用会计数字来调节企业的活动,例如通过要求某些性能目标是达到或施加限制,以允许投资及融资活动。会计数字之间的联系和债务合同已用于研究调查。(一)为什么经济后果是当企业发现符合要求的,或自愿进行会计政策变更,没有现金流的影响,(二)决定会计选择与经理人的自由裁量权行的因素使会计估计这种影响的净收益。这一假设债务契约提供激励经理,增加收入,要么减少会计基础约束三大要素,在债务协议或者避免那些成本盟约的侵害。经济后果的研究结果和研究人员,一般都混合了最近转向调查会计事务所的经验,现实的选择技术性违约(Beneish,Press,1993年,1995年;Sweeney,1994; Defond, Jiambalvo,1994年和DeAngelo, DeAngelo, Skinner,1994)。这样做是为了通过集中力量增加在一个样本的测试,凡违反债务契约的影响很可能会更加明显。虽然一些证据表明,管理者采取增加收入的违约行为发生延误(Sweeney,1994; Defond, Jiambalvo,1994),没有其他证据。此外,目前尚不清楚这种行为实际上是足以延迟的。因此,会计对管理者是否使收入在这些研究中越来越多的证据会选择,以避免违约是喜忧参半。然而,检查私人大样本债务协议,测量公司的流动比率和亲近有形净值得限制,Dichev, Skinner(2000)发现的比例显著的提高了公司略高于该公约的比,低于违规的阈值。他们认为,管理人员应该采取行动避免公约与默认一致。 3.2补偿协议 研究研究奖金假说(Healy,1985; Gaveretal,1995; Holthausen,Larker 和Sloan,1995年)提供的证据与经理改变公布的业绩一致,以增加他们的赔偿金。除Healy(1985)外,这些研究与管理人员提供的证据报告收益下降,以增加未来的一致赔偿。此外,Holthausen等,发现没有证据表明经理增加收入的增加的证据,表明其在Healy是引起他的实验设计。 3.3股权再融资 越来越多的研究机构审查经理的激励机制,以增加在安全产品方面的收入报告。在以前的研究确认,业主之间的信息不对称,经理人特别是在首次公开发行的投资者,如Leland和Pyle(1977)的模型表明,保留的权益金额由内部信号私人估价,如Hughes模型(1986年),Titman, Trueman(1986),Datar(1991)等研究了审计人员的声誉的作用发售价。在这些模型中,不对称的选择是决定用一个外部的证明者或披露制裁发行人保证合同为虚假的。研究实证,假定信息不对称的遗骸和使用各种应计费用模型来估计,在安全时间内经理行使酌情权产品。四项研究探讨了作为解释令人费解盈余管理行为后发行的股票价格。 Teoh, Welch; Rao(1998),Teoh; Welch, Wong(1998年)的研究收益将在首次公开招股(IPO)给Rangan(1998年)和Teoh Welch Wong(1998年)做,所以在经验丰富的背景发行股票。这些研究估计盈余管理程度,使用Jones围绕证券发行时间模型和关联的盈余管理估计与后收益和回报的问题。估计呈现的证据表明,盈余管理的问题呈极显著负相关和后续的收入和收益的性能。这些研究的结果表明,市场参与者无法理解意想不到的应计估值的影响。虽然结果令人信服,得出的结论盈余管理,故意在发行时的安全顺利误导投资者还为时过早。 Beneish(1998年)表示保留意见,结论概括如下:“首先,解释结论意味着金融报告舞弊现象普遍在发行时间。欺诈 的定义是全国舞弊审核师协会(1993年)为一个或多个故意旨在欺骗其他人,使他们的经济损失的行为。如果金融声明在发行欺诈是很普遍,例如经理人成功误导投资者,我希望,厂商将票价的角度差发行后的诉讼所带来的证券交易委员会SEC,不满的投资者,原告一方。我也期望管理者的角度差发行后票价的财富和就业。我会觉得影响对公司问题的证据和管理人员对故意收入信息化管理误导投资者存在的问题,并相信这些问题是未来值得研究的课题。