【作者】 周春梅；

【导师】 郭复初；

【作者基本信息】 西南财经大学 ， 财务管理， 2009， 博士

【摘要】 我国的资本市场是一个新兴的资本市场,无论是股票的发行与上市、配股、抑或是终止上市的处理规定,都以盈余作为重要的判断指标。正因为如此,上市公司管理层利用自身优势对盈余信息进行操控的现象非常普遍。自1992年深圳原野舞弊案起,我国资本市场接连爆出滥用会计信息的各种危机事件,如琼民源、红光实业、郑百文、银广夏、ST嘉宝等。而号称拥有全世界最透明和最充分的会计信息披露制度的美国也陆续出现了安然公司、施乐公司、世通公司、默克制药公司等一系列会计造假事件,这些事件使信息使用者对报告盈余(即名义盈余)的真实性和可靠性产生了极大的怀疑,也促使理论界掀起了对盈余质量研究的浪潮。但是,目前盈余功用理论的代表性观点如信息观、计价观和契约观主要侧重于对名义盈余的研究,并未深入挖掘盈余质量的有用性。鉴于此,我们认为盈余功用理论需要做进一步的拓展:即应当从对名义盈余的研究转向对盈余质量的研究,把盈余质量的有用性研究从一般性的盈余功用理论的研究中独立出来。此外,盈余功用理论是在会计学领域提出的,其主要的目的在于回答“会计信息是否有用,有什么用”的问题,并没有对当前资本市场的一些热点问题做出回应,研究视角过于狭隘。实际上,盈余功用研究的背后隐藏着更深层次的问题,如股票错误定价问题、上市公司资本配置效率低下问题等。由此可见,在资本市场迅速扩容的同时,如何解决股票错误定价和上市公司资本配置效率低下问题是目前的当务之急。在此背景下,本文将对盈余功用理论的研究从会计学领域拓展到财务学领域,依托发展财务学的相关理论构建了一个一般性的盈余功用研究的理论框架,并从财务学角度对我国上市公司普遍存在的股票错误定价问题和上市公司资本配置效率偏低等问题进行了较为深入的分析。本文希望通过上市公司盈余质量的研究,探索盈余质量的科学计算原理与方法,并考察现实背景下盈余质量的有用性,为我国上市公司科学发展与投资者理性决策提供理论支持与经验证据。本文的研究内容主要涵盖六个方面:盈余质量研究文献综述、盈余功用研究理论框架的构建、上市公司盈余质量的测度、上市公司盈余质量与股票价格、上市公司盈余质量与资本配置效率、研究结论与政策建议。具体来说,本文共分六个部分:第一部分,盈余质量研究文献综述。本部分系统地回顾了盈余质量的相关文献,通过对国内外相关研究成果的总结,引出本文所要研究的问题。第二部分,盈余功用研究理论框架的构建。虽然盈余功用理论取得了一系列的研究成果,但我们认为该理论还应该实现两个方面的拓展:一是应当突破会计学科的限制,将盈余功用理论拓展到发展财务学领域;二是应当从对名义盈余的研究转向对盈余质量的研究,把盈余质量的有用性研究从一般性的盈余功用理论的研究中独立出来。在此基础上,我们将传统的盈余功用理论扩展为四种观点:资本配置观、契约观、信息观和计价观。相应地,盈余质量有用性研究也应当包括以下几项内容:盈余质量与资本配置、盈余质量的经济后果、盈余质量与股票价格。第三部分,上市公司盈余质量的测度。盈余质量测度的研究成果较多,最具代表性的有以下几类:基于盈余信息质量特征的角度进行测度、基于财务报表的角度进行测度、基于资本市场的角度进行测度。通过对不同测度方法的比较,本部分立足于财务报表项目的构成及其钩稽关系,采用应计项目中包含的主观判断程度即操控性应计项目对盈余质量的高低进行测度,并据此对会计准则变迁过程中我国上市公司的盈余质量进行了分析。此外,本部分还根据盈余质量的定义从盈余的真实性、盈余的可实现性以及盈余的可持续成长性三个方面对新会计准则实施后上市公司盈余质量的具体情况做了进一步的系统分析。第四部分,上市公司盈余质量与股票价格。根据信息观的相关思想,上市公司的盈余质量是具有信号传递功能的,但事实是否如此呢?传统的研究并没有对此给予明确的回答。盈余信息的市场反应,实质上包含质和量两个方面,大多数有关盈余反应系数(简称ERC)的研究文献都是针对上市公司盈余的综合指标,将上市公司盈余的数量和质量分开以专门考察盈余质量市场反应的文献相对而言不多。本部分的核心问题实际上是考察上市公司盈余质量在股票定价中的作用。在控制净资产、无形资产、资本结构、公司规模等因素的前提下,本文实证分析发现盈余质量与股票价格呈显著的负相关关系,这一异常反应说明我国资本市场存在明显的股票错误定价现象。在全流通时代,由于非流通股也可以在二级市场上进行交易,因而低盈余质量的上市公司其控股股东操纵盈余的动机更强。因此,相比较股权分置时代而言,上市公司股票错误定价问题在全流通时代表现将会更为突出。第五部分,上市公司盈余质量与资本配置效率。本部分把盈余质量信息的有用性从虚拟经济领域拓展到实体经济领域,对盈余质量是否影响以及如何影响资本配置效率进行了探讨。研究结果发现,盈余质量的改善一方面能直接提高上市公司的资本配置效率,另一方面则能够通过降低代理成本间接促进上市公司资本配置效率的提高。因此,为了提高上市公司的资本配置效率,一方面我们应当加强信息披露,壮大机构投资者和专业分析师队伍,强化盈余质量在会计信息披露中的地位;另一方面,由于代理成本在盈余质量和资本配置效率二者的关系中存在显著的中介效应,我们认为应当进一步完善基于盈余数据设计的管理层报酬契约,将盈余质量(非操控性应计利润)作为签订管理层报酬契约的重要基础,以有效降低代理成本并最终提高上市公司资本配置效率。第六部分,结论与政策建议。本部分对全文的主要观点进行了总结,并针对我国大力发展资本市场背景下如何提高上市公司的盈余质量提供了相应的政策建议。本文的主要创新点包括:第一,对盈余质量概念进行了科学合理的界定。在对上市公司盈余质量展开分析之前,首先必须对什么是盈余质量有一个深入的了解。出于不同研究目的和研究范式的考量,本文除了从规范角度对盈余质量进行定义,还从实证角度给出了盈余质量的定义。第二,完整构建了盈余功用研究的理论框架。传统的盈余功用理论主要考察名义盈余是否有用,对盈余质量有用性的研究明显不足,这为我们进行盈余功用研究的拓展提供了空间。本文将发展财务学的资本稀缺假定、会计目标、盈余功用以及盈余质量有用性有机结合起来,并提出了一个完整的、一般性的盈余功用研究的理论框架,该框架从两个方面作了拓展:一是突破了会计学科的限制,将盈余功用理论拓展到发展财务学领域;二是从对名义盈余的研究转向对盈余质量的研究,把盈余质量的有用性研究从一般性的盈余功用理论的研究中独立出来。第三,为新兴国家和经济转轨国家上市公司盈余质量信息是否有用提供了经验证据,并得出了不同于成熟资本市场的结论。根据所构建的盈余功用研究的理论框架,本文对我国上市公司中盈余质量的有用性——盈余质量与股票价格之间的关系进行了实证检验。检验结果表明,虽然盈余质量是影响股票价格的重要因素,但盈余质量与股票价格却存在显著的负相关关系,资本市场对盈余质量的这一异常反应说明我国上市公司存在明显的股票错误定价问题。这一结论对与我国资本市场相类似的其他新兴国家和经济转轨国家同样适用。第四,将盈余质量信息的有用性从虚拟经济领域拓展到实体经济领域。盈余质量的有用性不仅存在于虚拟的资本市场,还应当存在于实体经济层面。目前有关盈余有用性的实证研究文献主要集中在“盈余价值相关性”的研究上。Holthausen & Watts(2001)指出,虽然这些研究的目的不尽相同,但是其所使用的模型都是相通的。从理论上看,“盈余价值相关性”的研究根源于各种证券定价模型(Beaver,2002)。本文认为,以证券定价模型作为通用模型在一定程度上成为了盈余功用理论发展的桎梏,盈余功用的实证检验至少应当有两个分支:一是检验盈余在股票定价方面是否有用,其通用模型是证券定价模型;二是检验盈余在引导资本配置方面是否有用,其通用模型是资本配置效率模型。第五,打破了学科边界,首次采用温忠麟等人(2004)在心理学领域提出的中介效应检验程序对代理成本在盈余质量和资本配置效率之间的中介效应进行了检验。在验证盈余质量和上市公司资本配置效率的关系时,几乎所有的研究文献都是采用单一模型进行计量。这种研究方法存在一个致命的缺陷,即当盈余质量的回归系数不显著时,我们倾向于得出盈余质量对资本配置效率没有影响的结论,但是在存在中介效应的情况下这一结论并不成立。本文采用温忠麟等人(2004)等人提出的中介效应检验程序,不仅使检验的第一类错误率和第二类错误率都比较小,而且还更为准确地把握了盈余质量影响上市公司资本配置效率的路径及作用机理。更多还原

【Abstract】 China’s capital market is a emerging market, earnings is taken as judgment index on these regulations stock issue, stock listing, rationing shares or delisting. Just because of this, the phenomena of earnings manipulation is very general. Since 1992, our capital market continuously occurred a series of accounting information fraud cases. As same as China, more mature countries such as America also appeared this kind of events. This phenomenon urged accounting information users highly doubted the truth and the reliability of nominal earnings. Under this background, theory circle paid close attention to earnings quality research. At present, earnings function theories mainly includes the following viewpoints:information perspective, valuation perspective and contract perspective. However, these viewpoints mainly emphasized nominal earnings research and excavate deeply the usefulness of earnings quality. In view of this, this paper holds that earnings function theories should be further expanded: that is we should turn to study earnings quality from nominal earnings and the research on earnings quality should be independent from current research. Earnings function theory was first proposed in the fields of accounting, whose purpose is to answer the question that“whether accounting information is useful and what the usefulness is”, which has no response to the hot issues of current capital market. Actually, there are some deeper questions behind earnings function research, such as stock wrong pricing , lower capital allocation efficiency of listed companies, etc. On this background, the paper will further expand earnings function theory to make our capital market better.The paper carries out research according to earnings function theory mainly from the perspective of finance. To provide theoretical support and empirical evidence for listed companies and investors, we will explore scientific calculation Method and usefulness of earnings quality. The main research contents of the paper are as follows: Literature review about earnings quality research, theory frame formation of earnings function, earnings quality measurement of listed company, the relationship between listed company’s earnings quality and stock price, the relationship between listed company’s earnings quality and capital allocation efficiency, research conclusions and policy suggestions. To be specific, the paper can be divided into six parts:The first part: Literature review about earnings quality research. Through reviewing related literatures about earnings quality systematically, this part educed the focus the paper wants to discuss.The second part: Theory frame formation of earnings function. At Present, earnings function theory obtained a series of achievements, but the author holds that this theory should also be expanded from two aspects: Firstly, we should organically combine earnings function theory with accounting objective and accounting theory system; Secondly, we also should pay more attention to earnings quality research and the research on earnings quality usefulness should be independent from current earnings function research. On this basis, the author expanded the traditional earnings function theories, which is composed of the following viewpoints: Capital allocation perspective, contract perspective, information perspective and valuation perspective. Accordingly, the following contents should be included in the research on earnings quality usefulness: Earnings quality and capital allocation, economic consequences of earnings quality, earnings quality and stock price.The third part: Earnings quality measurement of listed company. Achievements about earnings quality measurement were rich, the most representative measurement methods were: measurement from the perspective of earnings information quality characteristic, financial statement and capital market. Through comparing with various measurement methods, this part adopted discretionary accruals to measure listed company’s earnings quality. Based on this, this part analyze earnings quality of our country’s listed companies during the course of accounting standards changes. In addition, this part also furtherly analyze earnings quality of our country’s listed companies after new accounting standards implementation, which, in terms of concrete contents, can be classified into truth of earnings, realizability of earnings and sustainability of earnings. The forth part: Listed company’s earnings quality and stock price. According to the idea of information perspective, earnings quality has the function of signal transduction,but traditional research didn’t answer this question clearly. Market reaction of earnings information includs two aspects: quality and quantity. Most research literatures about earnings response coefficient aimed at comprehensive index of listed company’s earnings, but special study on market reaction of earnings quality is comparative little. In this part, the author mainly investigated the effect of earnings quality in stock pricing. After controling other factors (such as net assets, intangible assets, capital structure, firm size ), the author found that high negative correlation existed between earnings quality and stock price,which shows that there are stock mispricing phenomenon exists in our capital market. During the entire circulation time, non-tradable shares can be traded on secondary market, those controlling shareholders of low earnings quality listed companies had strong motivation to control accounting earnings. So, compared with the split Share Structure time, the problem of stock mispricing will be more prominent during the entire circulation time.The fifth part: Listed company’s earnings quality and capital allocation efficiency. In this part, the usefulness of earnings quality was extended to the field of real economy from the field of fictitious economy. Specially, the author studied whether earnings quality can improve capital allocation efficiency and how to improve it. Through the investigation of China public listed corporations,we proved that : On the one hand,high earnings quality can improve capital allocation efficiency directly; On the other hand,through reducing agency costs,high earnings quality can improve capital allocation efficiency indirectly. All of the research conclusions showed that earnings quality was the key influencing factor of capital allocation efficiency. By comparison with western developed countries,low capital allocation efficiency was the biggest problem of China stock market. In order to improve our Chinese capital allocation efficiency,some measures should be taken:Firstly,we should strengthen information release,expand profession analysts group and develop institutional investors;Secondly,because of the significant mediator effect of agency cost,we also should perfect management compensation contract and take earnings quality as important foundation of the contract.The sixth part: Conclusions and policy suggestions. This part summarized main viewpoints of full text and proposed corresponding countermeasures and suggestions.The main innovations are as follows:Firstly, the paper defined the concept of earnings quality scientificly and rationally. Before analyzing on listed company’s earnings quality, we must deeply understand what is earnings quality. Considering of the different research purpose and methods, this paper proposed definition from two angles: Normative research and positive research.Secondly, the paper constructed theory frame formation of earnings function. Traditional earnings function theory ignored the usefulness of earnings quality, we holded that this theory should be expanded furtherly, it should be organically combined with accounting objective and earnings function. On the basis of this, this paper presented a perfect theory frame formation of earnings function, which achievedt innovation in two aspects: On the one hand, we should organically combine earnings function theory with accounting objective and accounting theory system; On the other hand, we also should pay more attention to earnings quality research and the research on earnings quality usefulness should be independent from current earnings function research.Thirdly, the paper provided empirical evidence for the listed companies of emerging-market and transition countries and draw a conclusion which is different from mature capital market. According to the theory frame formation of earnings function, this paper carried out empirical test for the relation between earnings quality and stock price. The results showed that, earnings quality had an most important important influence on stock price, but the author also found that there was high negative correlation existed between earnings quality and stock price,which shows that there are stock mispricing phenomenon exists in our capital market. This conclusion was usefull to other emerging-market and transition countries.Forthly, the paper extended the usefulness of earnings quality to the field of real economy from the field of fictitious economy. At present, empirical literatures mainly concentrated on the research of“earnings information’s value relevance”. Holthausen & Watts(2001)indicated that, although the purpose of these literatures were not the same, the adopted models were similar, the origin of“earnings information’s value relevance”was all kinds of securities pricing models(Beaver,2002). The author considered that taking securities pricing model as general model hindered the development of earnings fuction theory to some degree. The empirical test of earnings fuction should include two branches: one branch, we should test whether earnings can affect stock price, whose general model is securities pricing model; the other branch, we should test whether earnings can affect capital allocation, whose general model is capital allocation efficiency model.Fifthly, the paper broke the subject boundary , and adopted mediator effect test procedure which was firstly proposed by Wenzhonglin et al.(2004) in the field of psychology. The author used this test procedure to test the mediator effect of agency cost between earnings quality and capital allocation efficiency, which reduced type 1 error rate and type 2 error rate. Moreover, this kind of test procedure also accurately grasped the influence of earnings quality on capital allocation efficiency and action mechanism.更多还原