盈余管理和盈利质量外文文献及翻译
盈余质量分析的评价指标体系外文翻译
原文：Analysis of earnings quality evaluation index system Earnings quality is an important aspect of evaluating an entity's financial health, yet investors, creditors, and other financial statement users often overlook it. Earnings quality refers to the ability of reported earnings to reflect the company's true earnings, as well as the usefulness of reported earnings to predict future earnings. Earnings quality also refers to the stability, persistence, and lack of variability in reported earnings. The evaluation of earnings is often difficult, because companies highlight a variety of earnings figures: revenues, operating earnings, net income, and pro forma earnings. In addition, companies often calculate these figures differently. The income statement alone is not useful in predicting future earnings.The SEC and the investing public are demanding greater assurance about the quality of earnings. Analysts need a more suitable basis for earnings estimates. Credit rating agencies are under increased scrutiny of their ratings by the SEC. Such comfort level and information is not provided in the audit report or the financial statements. Only 27% of finance executives recently surveyed by CFO “feel 'very confident' about the quality and completeness of information available about public companies” [“It's Better (and Worse) Than You Think,” by D. Dupree May 3, 2004].There are a variety of definitions and models for assessing earnings quality. The authors have proposed a uniform, independent definition of quality of earnings that allows for the development of an Earnings Quality Assessment (EQA) model. The proposed EQA model evaluates the degree to which a company's income statement reports its true earnings and the extent to which it can predict and anticipate future earnings.Earnings Quality DefinedA variety of earnings-quality definitions exist. Teats [“Quality of Earnings: An Introduction to the Issues in Accounting Education,” Issues in Accounting Education, 17 (4), 2002] states that “some consider quality of earnings to encompass the underlying economic performance of a firm, as well as the accounting standards that report on that underlying phenomenon; others consider quality of earnings to refer only to how well accounting earnings convey information about the underlying phenomenon.” Pratt defines earnings quality as “the extent to which net income reported on the income statement differs from true earnings” [in F. Hodge, “Investors'Perceptions of Earnings Quality, Auditor Independence, and the Usefulness of Audited Financial Information,” Accounting Horizons 17 (Supplement), 2003]. Penman [“The Quality of Financial Statements: Perspectives from the Recent Stock Market Bubble,” Accounting Horizons 17 (Supplement), 2003] indicates that quality of earnings is based on the quality of forward earnings as well as current reported earnings. Shipper and Vincent [“Earnings Quality,” Accounting Horizons 17 (Supplement), 2003] define earnings quality as “the extent to which reported earnings faithfully represent Hicks Ian income,” which includes “the change in net economic assets other than from transactions with owners.”Using various definitions of earnings quality, researchers and analysts have developed several models. The Sidebar summarizes eight models for measuring earnings quality. The models are used for very narrow, specific purposes. While the criteria used in these definitions and models overlap, none provide a comprehensive view of earnings quality. For example, the primary purpose of the Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CRFA)'s model is to uncover methods of earnings manipulation. Of the eight models discussed, only the Lev-Thiagarajan and Empirical Research Partners models have been empirically tested for evidence of usefulness related to quality of earnings. Lev and Thiagarajan's findings confirm that their fundamental (earnings) quality score correlates to earnings persistence and growth, and that subsequent growth is higher in high quality–scoring groups. Empirical Research Partners' model is based in part on methodology developed and tested by Potosi, whose findings indicate a positive relationship between scores based on the model and future profitability.The following summarizes the criteria considered in each of the eight models for measuring earnings quality.Center for Financial Research and Analysis: Four criteria to uncover methods used to manipulate earnings. Report includes financial summary, accounting policy analysis, discussion of areas of concernEmpirical Research Partners: Three components: net working-capital growth rate, net concurrent assets, deferred taxes; incremental earnings and free cash flow production relative to each new dollar of revenue or book value; and nine financial indicators, put together for a single gauge of fundamentals. Items viewed favorably:positive return on assets and operating cash flow; increases in return on assets, current ratio, gross margin, asset turnover; operating cash flow that exceeds net income.Items viewed unfavorably: increases in long-term debt-to-assets; presence of equity offerings. Each indicator given a 1 if favorable, an O if not; scores aggregated on an O to 9 scales.Ford Equity Research: Earnings variability is minimum standard error of earnings for past eight years, fitted to an exponential curve. Growth persistence considers earnings growth consistency over 10 years; projected earnings growth rate is applied to normal earnings to derive long-term value. Operating earnings calculated by excluding unusual items, such as restructuring charges and asset write-downs; earnings trend analysis done on this adjusted figure. Repurchases of an entity's own shares are analyzed to determine if results are favorable.Lev-Thiagarajan: Each fundamental is assigned a value of 1 for positive signal, O for negative signal. Each of 12 factors is equally weighted to develop aggregate fundamental score. Negative signals include: decrease in gross margins disproportionate to sales; disproportionate (versus industry) decreases in capital expenditures and R&D; increases in S&A expenses disproportionate to sales; and unusual decreases in effective tax rate. Inventory and accounts receivable signals measure percent change in each (individually) minus percent change in sales; inventory increases exceeding cost of sales increases and disproportionate increases in receivables to sales are considered negative. Unusual changes in percent change of provision for doubtful receivables, relative to percent change in gross receivables, are also viewed negatively. Percent change in sales minus percent change in order backlog is considered an indication of future performance.Merrill Lynch (David Hawkins) (see earnings quality: the establishment of a real 360 View, 2002). Higher total capital ratio (pre-tax operating return on total capital) returns a higher quality of earnings equivalent. Liquidity ratio above 1.0 (net income figure how close it is to achieve positive cash) that the higher quality of earnings. Re-investment in productive assets ratio above 1.0 (committed to maintaining the fixed asset investment) that a higher quality of earnings. The ratio ofeffective tax rate for all companies meet or exceed the average level (dependence on low-tax report) that the higher quality of earnings. Model also believes that long-term credit rating and Standard & Poor's S & P earnings and dividend growth and stability of rank-based, over the past 10 years.Raymond James & Partners (Michael Krensavage) (also see the earnings quality monitoring, 2003.) 1 (worst) to 10 (best) rating as a benchmark of 10 exclusive distributions; weighted average rating in the combined to determine the earnings quality scores. Low earnings quality indicators: increase in receivables; earnings growth due to reduced tax rates, interest capitalization, high frequency / time scale of the project. In a recent major acquisition made during the punishment. Practice of conservative pension fund management and improve the R & D budget faster than revenue in return. Cash flow growth and the related net income and gross margin of profit a positive impact on quality improvement.Standard & Poor's core earnings (see also the technical core earnings Bulletin, October 2002). Attempts to give a more accurate performance of the existing business of the real. Core benefits include: Employee stock option expenses; restructuring charges from ongoing operations; offset the depreciation of business assets or deferred pension costs; purchased research and development costs; merger / acquisition costs; and unrealized gains and losses on hedging. Excluded items: Goodwill impairment charges, pension income; litigation or insurance settlements, from the sale of assets (loss) and the provisions of the previous year's expenses and the reversal.UBS (David Bianca) (also see S & P 500 accounting information quality control, 2003.) Comparison of GAAP operating income; the difference between the net one time standard. Employee stock option expenses charged to operating profit. Assuming the market value of return on pension assets to adjust interest rates or the discount rate times. Health care costs adjusted for inflation, if the report is 300 basis points more than the S & P 500 companies are expected weighted average. Joint Oil Data Initiative is AUTHOR_AFFILIATION Bell ovary, CPA, is a Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Don E. Incoming, CPA, graduate students, professors, and Donald E &Beverly Flynn is Chairman of the holder at Marquette University. Michael D • Akers, CPA, CMA, CFE, CIA, CBM, is a Professor and Head of the Department.Of the 51 criteria/measurements used in the eight models, only eight (acquisitions; cash flow from operations/net income; employee stock options; operating earnings; pension fund expenses; R&D spending; share buyback/issuance; and tax-rate percentage) are common to two models, and only two (gross margin and one-time items) overlap in three models.The first step, then, is to develop a standard definition of earnings quality. One of the objectives of Fast’s Conceptual Framework is to assist investors in making investment decisions, which includes predicting future earnings. The Conceptual Framework refers not only to the reliability (or truthfulness) of financial statements, but also to the relevance and predictive ability of information presented in financial statements. The authors' definition of quality of earnings draws from Pratt's and Penman's definitions. The authors define earnings quality as the ability of reported earnings to reflect the company's true earnings and to help predict future earnings. They consider earnings stability, persistence, and lack of variability to be key. As Beaver indicates: “current earnings are useful for predicting future earnings … [and] future earnings are an indicator of future dividend-paying ability” (in M. Bauman, “A Review of Fundamental Analysis Research in Accounting,” Journal of Accounting Literature 15, 1996).Earnings Quality Assessment (EQA)The authors propose an Earnings Quality Assessment (EQA) that provides an independent measure of the quality of a company's reported earnings. The EQA consists of a model that uses 20 criteria that impact earnings quality (see Exhibit 2 ), applied as a “rolling evaluation” of all p eriods presented in the financial statements. The EQA is more comprehensive than the eight models presented, considering revenue and expense items, as well as one-time items, accounting changes, acquisitions, and discontinued operations. The model also assesses the stability, or lack thereof, of a company, which leads to a more complete understanding of its future earnings potential.The criteria were drawn from the eight models discussed, including the 10 criteria overlapping two or more models. The EQA evaluator assigns a point value ranging from 1 to 5 for each of the 20 criteria, with a possible total of 100 points. Ascore of 1 indicates a negative effect on earnings quality, and a score of 5 indicates a very positive effect on earnings quality. EQA scores, then, can range from 20 to 100. Similar to the grading methods for bond ratings, grades are assigned based on the following scale: 85–100 points = A, 69–84 points = AB, 53–68 points = B, 35–51 points = BC and 20–34 points = C. While the EQA evaluator needs to use professional judgment in assigning scores to each of the criteria, the guidelines in Exhibit 2 are recommended.The Application of EQATo illustrate the process of applying the EQA, the authors chose two large pharmaceutical companies, Merck and with. Each of the authors independently applied the EQA to Merck's and Width’s 2003 financial statements, and then met to discuss their results. Based upon each individual assessment and the subsequent discussion, they reached an agreed-upon score, presented in Exhibit 3 .This process is similar to what an engagement team would go through. Each member would complete the EQA independently, and then the group would meet as a whole to discuss the assessment and reach a conclusion. This process allows for varying levels of experience, and takes into account each team member's perspective based on exposure to various areas of the company. The audit team's discussion is also helpful when one member finds an item that another might not have, which may explain variances in the scores assigned by each individual.For the illustration, the EQA was based solely on data provided in the financial statements. The authors found a high level of agreement on the quality of earnings measures, and there was little variation in the scores for both companies. One would expect even less variation when a group more intimately exposed to an organization, such as the audit engagement team, completes the EQA. The consistency provided by use of the EQA model would enhance the comfort level of users of the financial statements and the EQA.Need for Further DevelopmentThere is significant need for the development of a uniform definition and a consistent model to measure earnings quality. This article provides such a definition, positing that the quality of earnings includes the ability of reported earnings to reflect the company's true earnings, as well as the usefulness of reported earnings to predict future earnings. The authors propose an Earnings Quality Assessment (EQA) model that is consistent with this definition. The EQA recognizes many of the fragilities ofGAAP, and takes into account factors that are expected to affect future earnings but that are not explicitly disclosed in the financial statements.The authors propose that auditors conduct the EQA and issue a public report. Auditors' EQA reports will provide higher-quality information to financial statement users and meet the SEC's demand for greater assurance about the reliability of earnings figures.Source: MichaelD.Akers, 2005. “Analysis of earnings quality evaluation index system” the CPA journal. November.pp.199.译文：盈余质量分析的评价指标体系盈余质量是债权人评价一个实体的财务状况的重要方面，但投资者和其他财务报表使用者往往忽略它。
企业盈利质量分析中英文对照外文翻译文献
企业盈利质量分析中英文对照外文翻译文献企业盈利质量分析中英文对照外文翻译文献企业盈利质量分析中英文对照外文翻译文献(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)原文：Measuring the quality of earnings1. IntroductionGenerally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) offer some flexibility in preparing the financial statements and give the financial managers some freedom to select among accounting policies and alternatives. Earning management uses the flexibility in financial reporting to alter the financial results of the firm (Ortega and Grant, 2003).In other words, earnings management is manipulating the earning to achieve a企业盈利质量分析中英文对照外文翻译文献predetermined target set by the management. It is a purposeful intervention in the external reporting process with the intent of obtaining some private gain (Schipper, 1989).Levit (1998) defines earning management as a gray area where the accounting is being perverted; where managers are cutting corners; and, where earnings reports reflect the desires of management rather than the underlying financial performance of the company.The popular press lists several instances of companies engaging in earnings management. Sensormatic Electronics, which stamped shipping dates and times on sold merchandise, stopped its clocks on the last day of a quarter until customer shipments reached its sales goal. Certain business units of Cendant Corporation inflated revenues nearly $500 million just prior to a merger; subsequently, Cendant restated revenuesand agreed with the SEC to change revenue recognition practices. AOL restated earnings for $385 million in improperly deferred marketing expenses. In 1994, the Wall Street Journal detailed the many ways in which General Electric smoothed earnings, including the careful timing of capital gains and the use of restructuring charges and reserves, in response to the article, General Electric reportedly received calls from other corporations questioning why such common practices were“front-page〞 news.Earning 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 Whalen, 1999).Magrath and Weld (2002) indicate that abusive earnings management and fraudulent practices begins by engaging in earnings management schemes designed primarily to “smooth〞 earnings to meet internally or externally imposed earnings forecasts and analysts’ expectations. Even if earnings management does not explicitly violate accounting rules, it is an ethically questionable practice. An organization that manages its earnings sends a企业盈利质量分析中英文对照外文翻译文献message to its employees that bending the truth is an acceptable practice. Executives who partake of this practice risk creating an ethical climate in which other questionable activities may occur. A manager who asks the sales staff to help sales one day forfeits the moral authority to criticize questionable sales tactics another day.Earnings management can also become a very slippery slope, which relatively minor accounting gimmicks becoming more and more aggressiveuntil they create material misstatements in the financial statements (Clikeman, 2003)The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued three staff accounting bulletins (SAB) to provide guidance on some accounting issues in order to prevent the inappropriate earnings management activities by public companies: SAB No. 99 “Materiality〞, SAB No. 100 “Restructuring and Impairment Charges〞 and SAB No. 101 “Revenue Recognition〞.Earnings management behavior may affect the quality of accounting earnings, which is defined by Schipper and Vincent (2003) as the extent to which the reported earnings faithfully represent Hichsian economic income, which is the amount that can be consumed (i.e. paid out as dividends) during a period, while leaving the firm equally well off at the beginning and the end of the period.Assessment of earning quality requires sometimes the separations of earnings into cash from operation and accruals, the more the earnings is closed to cash from operation, the higher earnings quality. As Penman (2001) states that the purpose of accounting quality analysis is to distinguish between the “hard〞 numbers resulting from cash flows and the “soft〞 numbers resulting from accrual accounting.The quality of earnings can be assessed by focusing on the earning persistence; high quality earnings are more persistent and useful in the process of decision making.Beneish and Vargus (2002) investigate whether insider trading is informative about earnings quality using earning persistence as a measure for the quality of earnings, they find that income-increasing accruals are significantly more persistent for firms with abnormal insider buying and significantly less persistent for firms with abnormal insider selling, relative to firms which there is no abnormal insider trading.Balsam et al. (2003) uses the level of discretionary accruals as a direct measure企业盈利质量分析中英文对照外文翻译文献for earning quality. The discretionary accruals model is based on a regression relationship between the change in total accruals as dependent variable and change in sales and change in the level of property, plant and equipment, change in cash flow from operations and change in firm size (total assets) as independent variables. If the regression coefficients in this model are significant that means that there is earning management in that firm and the earnings quality is low.This research presents an empirical study on using three different approaches of measuring the quality of earnings on different industry. The notion is; if there is a complete consistency among the three measures, a general assessment for the quality of earnings (high or low) can be reached and, if not, the quality of earnings is questionable and needs different other approaches for measurement and more investigations and analysis.The rest of the paper is divided into following sections: Earnings management incentives, Earnings management techniques, Model development, Sample and statistical results, and Conclusion.2. Earnings management incentives 2.1 Meeting analysts’ expectations In general, analysts’ expectations and company predictions tend to address two high-profile components of financial performance: revenue and earnings from operations.The pressure to meet revenue expectations is particularly intense and may be the primary catalyst in leading managers to engage in earning management practices that result in questionable or fraudulent revenue recognition practices. Magrath and Weld (2002) indicate that improperrevenue recognition practices were the cause of one-third of all voluntary or forced restatements of income filed with the SEC from 1977 to 2000. Ironically, it is often the companies themselves that create this pressure to meet the market’s earnings expectations. It is common practice for companies to provide earnings estimates to analysts and investors. Management is often faced with the task of ensuring their targeted estimates are met.企业盈利质量分析中英文对照外文翻译文献Several companies, including Coca-Cola Co., Intel Corp., and Gillette Co., have taken a contrary stance and no longer provide quarterly and annual earnings estimates to analysts. In doing so, these companies claim they have shifted their focus from meeting short-term earnings estimates to achieving their long-term strategies (Mckay and Brown, 2002).2.2 To avoid debt-covenant violations and minimize political costs Some firms have the incentive to avoid violating earnings-based debt covenants. If violated, the lender may be able to raise the interest rate on the debt or demand immediate repayment. Consequently, some firms may use earnings-management techniques to increase earnings to avoid such covenant violations. On the other hand, some other firms have the incentive to lower earnings in order to minimize political costs associated with being seen as too profitable. For example, if gasoline prices have been increasing significantly and oil companies are achieving record profit level, then there may be incentive for the government to intervene and enact an excess-profit tax or attempt to introduce price controls.2.3 To smooth earnings toward a long-term sustainable trendFor many years it has been believed that a firm should attempt to reduce the volatility in its earnings stream in order to maximize share price. Because a highly violate earning pattern indicates risk, therefore thestock will lose value compared to others with more stable earnings patterns. Consequently, firms have incentives to manage earnings to help achieve a smooth and growing earnings stream (Ortega and Grant, 2003).2.4 Meeting the bonus plan requirementsHealy (1985) provides the evidence that earnings are managed in the direction that is consistent with maximizing executives’ earnings-based bonus. When earnings will be below the minimum level required to earn a bonus, then earning are managed upward so that the minimum is achieved and a bonus is earned. Conversely, when earning will be above the maximum level at which no additional bonus is paid, then earnings are managed downward. The extra earnings that will not generate extra bonus this current period are saved to be used to earn a bonus in a future period.。
企业利润分析中英文对照外文翻译文献
中英文对照外文翻译文献(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)原文：Profit PatternsThe most important objective of companies is to create, develop and maintain one or more competitive advantages in order to generate dividends for the shareholders. For a long time, it was simply a question of dominating the market, either by costs or by a policy of differentiation. As Michael Porter advised, it was essential to avoid being “stuck in the middle”. This way of thinking set up competitive rivalry in a closed world, and tended towards stability. This model is less and less relevant today forwhole sectors of the economy. We see a multitude of strategic movements which defy the logic of the old system. “Profit Patterns”lists numerous strategies which have joined the small number that we knew before. These patterns often combine to give rise to strategic models which are better adapted to the new and changing needs of the consumer.Increasing the value of a company depends on its capacity to predict Value migration from one economic sector to another or from one company to another has unimaginable proportions, in particular because of the new phenomena that mass investment and venture capital represent. The public is looking for companies that will succeed in the future and bet on the winner.Major of managers have a talent for recognizing development market trends There are some changing and development trends in all business sectors. They can be erected into models, thereby making it possible to acquire a technique for predicting them. This consists of recognizing them in the actual economic context. This book proposes thirty strategic prediction models divided into seven families. Predicting is not enough: one still has to act in time! Managers analyze development trends in the environment in order to identifyopportunities. They then have to determine a strategic plan for their company, and set up a system aligning the internal and external organizational structure as a function of their objectives.For most of the 20th century, mastering strategic evolution models was not a determining factor, and formulas for success were fixed and relatively simple. In industry, the basic model stated that profit was a function of relative market share. T oday, this rule is confronted with more and more contradictions: among car manufacturers for example, where small companies like T oyota are more profitable than General Motors and Ford. The highest rises in value have become the exclusive right of the companies with the most efficient business designs. These upstart companies have placed themselves in the profit zone of their sectors thanks, in part, to their size, but also to their new way of doing business –exploiting new rules which are sources of value creation. Among the new rules which define a good strategic plan are:1. Strong orientation towards the customer2. Internal decisions which are coherent with the overall activity, concerning the products and services as well as the involvement in the different activities of the value chain3. An efficient mechanism for value–capture.4. A powerful source of differentiation and of strategic control, inspiring investor confidence in future cash-flow.5. An internal organization carefully designed to support and reinforce the company’s strategic plan.Why does value migrate? The explanation lies largely in the explosion of risk-capital activities in the USA. Since the 40’s, of the many companies that have been created, about a thousand have allowed talented employees, the “brains”, to work without the heavy structures of very big companies. The risk–capital factor is now entering a new phase in the USA, in that the recipes for innovation and value creation are spreading from just the risk-capital companies to all big companies. A growing number of the 500 richest companies have an internal structure for getting into the game of investing in companies with high levels of value-creation. Where does this leave Eur ope? According to recent research, innovation in strategic thinking is under way in Europe, albeit with a slight time-lag. Globalization is making the acceptation of these value-creation rules a condition of global competitively .There is a second phenomenon that has an even more radical influence on value-creation –polarization: The combination of a convincing and innovative strategic plan, strategic control and a dominant market share creates a terrificincrease in investor confidence. The investors believe that the company has established its position of strength not only for the current, but also for the next strategic cycle. The result is an exponential growth in value, and especially a spectacular out-distancing of the direct rivals. The polarization process typically has two stages. In phase 1, the competitors seem to be level. In fact, one of them has understood, has “got it”, before the others and is investing in a new strategic action plan to take into account the pattern which is starting to redefine the sector. Phase 2 begins when the conditions are right for the pattern to take over: at this moment, the competitor who “got it”, attracts the attention of customers, investors and potential recruits (the brains). The intense public attention snowballs, the market value explodes to leave the nearest competitor way behind. Examples are numerous in various sectors: Microsoft against Apple and Lotus, Coca-Cola against Pepsi, Nike against Reebok and so on. Polarization of value raises the stakes and adds a sense of urgency: The first company to anticipate market change and to take appropriate investment decisions can gain a considerable lead thanks to recognition by the market.In a growing number of sectors today, competition is concentrated on the race towards mindshare. The companywhich leads this race attracts customers who attract others in an upwards spiral. At the transition from phase 1 to phase 2, the managing team’s top priority is to win the mindshare battle. There are three stages in this strategy: mind sharing with customers gives an immediate competitive advantage in terms of sales; mind sharing with investors provides the resources to maintain this advantage, and mind sharing with potential recruits increases the chances of maintaining the lead in the short and the long term. This triple capture sets off a chain reaction releasing an enormous amount of economic energy. Markets today are characterized by a staggering degree of transparency. Successes and failures are instantaneously visible to the whole world. The extraordinary success of some investors encourages professional and amateurs to look for the next hen to lay a golden egg. This investment mentality has spread to the employment market, where compensations (such as stock-options) are increasingly linked to results. From these three components - customers, investors and new talent –is created the accelerating phenomenon, polarization: thousands of investors look towards the leader at the beginning of the race. The share value goes up at the same time as the rise in customer numbers and the public perception that the current leader willbe the winner. The rise in share-price gets more attention from the media, and so on. How to get the knowledge before the others, in order to launch the company into leadership? There are several attitudes, forms of behavior and knowledge that can be used: being paranoiac, thinking from day to day that the current market conditions are going to change; talking to people with different points of view; being in the field, looking for signs of change. And above all, building a research network to find the patterns of strategic change, not only in one’s particular sector, but in the whole economy, so as always to understand the patterns a bit better and a bit sooner than the competitors.Experienced managers can detect similarities between movements of value in different circumstances. 30 of these patterns can be divided into 7 categories.Some managers understand migrations of value before other managers, allowing them to continually improvise their business plan in order to find and exploit value. Experience is an obvious advantage: situations can repeat themselves or be similar to others, so that experienced managers recognize and assimilate them quickly. There about 30 patterns .which can be put into 7 groups according to their key factors. It is important to understand that the patterns have three general characteristics:multiplicity, variants and cycles. The principle of multiplicity indicates that while a sector or a company may be affected by just one simple strategic pattern, most situations are more complicated and involve several simultaneously evolving patterns. The variants to the known models are developed in different circumstances and according to the creativity of the users of the models. Studying the variants gives more finesse in model-analysis. Finally, each model depends on economic cycles which are more or less long. The time a pattern takes to develop depends on its nature and also on the nature of the customers and sector in question.1) The first family of strategic evolution patterns consists of the six “Mega patterns”: these models do not address any particular dimension of the activity (customer, channels of distribution and value chain), but have an overall and transversal influence. They owe their name “Mega”to their range and their impact (as much from the point of view of the different economic sectors as from the duration). The six Mega models are: No profit, Back to profit, Convergence, Collapse in the middle, De facto standard and T echnology shifts the board. •The No profit pattern is characterized by a zero or negative result over several years in a company or economic sector. The first factor which favors this pattern is the existence of a singlestrategic a plan in several competitors: they all apply differentiation by price to capture market-share. The second factor is the loss of the “crutch”of the sector, that is the end of a system of the help, such as artificially maintained interest levels, or state subsidies. Among the best examples of this in the USA are in agriculture and the railway industry in the 50’s and 60’s, and in the aeronautical industry in the 80’s and 90’s. •The Back to profit pattern is characterized by the emergence of innovative strategic plans or the projects which permit the return of profits. In the 80’s, the watch industry was stagnating in a no profits zone. The vision of Nicolas Hayek allowed Swatch and other brands to get back into a profit-making situation thanks to a products pyramid built around the new brand. The authors rightly attribute this phenomenon to investors’recognition of the superiority of these new business designs. However this interpretation merits refinement: the superiority resides less in the companies’current capacity to identify the first an indications of strategic discontinuity than in their future capacity to develop a portfolio of strategic options and to choose the right one at the right time. The value of a such companies as Amazon and AOL, which benefit from financial polarization, can only be explained in this way. To be competitive in the long-term,a company must not only excel in its “real”market, but also in its financial market. Competition in both is very fierce, and one can not neglect either of these fields of battle without suffering the consequences. This share-market will assume its own importance alongside the commercial market, and in the future, its successful exploitation will be a key to the strategic superiority of publicly-quoted companies.Increasing the value of a company depends on its capacity to predictValue migration from one economic sector to another or from one company to another has unimaginable proportions, in particular because of the new phenomena that mass investment and venture capital represent. The public is looking for companies that will succeed in the future and bet on the winner.Major managers have a talent for recognizing development market trendsThere are some changing and development trends in all business sectors. They can be erected into models, thereby making it possible to acquire a technique for predicting them. This consists of recognizing them in the actual economic context.Predicting is not enough: one still has to act in timeManagers analyze development trends in the environment in order to identify opportunities. They then have to determine a strategic plan for their company, and set up a system aligning the internal and external organizational structure as a function of their objectivesSource: David .J. Morrison, 2001. “Profit Patterns”. Times Business.pp.17-27.译文：利润模式一个公司价值的增长依赖于公司自身的能力的预期，价值的迁移也只是从一个经济部门转移到另外一个经济部门或者是一个公司到另外一个意想不到的公司。
盈余管理：一种普遍现象[外文翻译]
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外文翻译Earnings Management：A Perspective Material Source: Managerial Finance Author:Messod D.Beneish AbstractAn 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 Management2.1 DefinitionsNotice 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.” (Davidso n, 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 operati on 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 thecontext 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 managementIf 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. Aslater 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 ManagementI 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 CovenantsDebt 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, andmeasuring 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 manag ers take actions consistent with avoiding covenant default.3.2 Compensation AgreementsStudies 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 OfferingsA 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 marketparticipants 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表上的收入。
《IPO公司盈余管理探究国内外文献综述2400字》
IPO公司盈余管理研究国内外文献综述国外研究现状国外学者对盈余管理的研究相对较早，美国学者Schipper于1989年提出了“盈余管理”的概念，他认为企业管理当局会对公开披露的财务信息进行粉饰调节，以实现自身利益的最大化，不同于利润操纵，盈余管理是在不违反会计准则的前提下，对会计政策和会计估计进行主观选择Scott William R (1997)认为盈余管理就是企业管理层为了实现公司利益或者市场价值最大化的目的，而选择相应的会计政策的行为。
PaulM Healy和James M Wahlen (1999)指出盈余管理具体表现在企业管理当局通过调整具体的交易活动，影响公司会计报告信息，以此实现误导利益相关方决策的目的。
企业管理层会出于种种目的操纵盈余信息，Watts和Zimmerman(1990)认为管理层会出于报酬契约、债务契约和政治方面的考虑，会采取一定的手段影响企业对外披露的财务信息。
Healy (1999)发现，一些上市公司管理者会为了获得奖金报酬，对公司业绩进行调整，扮靓财务数据。
Jones (1991)研究发现，一些企业会为了申请政府税收减免而递延当年收益。
外部的监管与监督是影响企业IPO盈余管理的重要外部因素，严格的外部监管会在一定程度上约束IPO公司的盈余管理活动。
Cohen (2000)研究发现在萨班斯法案颁布后，由于管理单位加大对于上市公司盈余管理的监管和处罚，上市公司更倾向于采用真实活动的盈余管理。
Rowchoydhury C 2006研究发现，成熟的机构投资者会识别影响公司长远利益的盈余管理活动，并采取相应的遏制措施。
国内研究现状顾明润和田存志(2012)认为由于我国一级资本市场证券定价市场功能相对较弱，许多IPO公司会为了提高股票的发行价格而对公司财务报告进行粉饰。
同时，由于我国资本市场IPO制度仍处于核准制向注册制过渡的阶段，对公司IPO 资格仍有较高的要求，张征和崔毅(2014)认为IPO公司会出于满足发行条件和获得更多的发行收入的目的，在会计准则允许的范围内对盈余进行调整。
利润质量外文参考文献
利润质量外文参考文献以下是关于利润质量的外文参考文献，中文翻译已标注在括号里：1. Dechow, P. M., & Dichev, I. D. (2002). The quality of accruals and earnings: The role of accrual estimation errors. Accounting review, 77(s-1), 35-59. （Dechow和Dichev，2002年，论文名称：应计调整和净收益的质量：应计调整估计误差的作用。
）2. Kasznik R. (1999). On the association betweenvoluntary disclosure and earnings management. Journal of accounting research, 37(1), 57-81. （Kasznik，1999年，论文名称：自愿披露和盈余管理之间的关联。
）3. Piotroski, J. D., & Wong, T. J. (2005). The evolution of profitability and earnings in recent decades. Journal of accounting research, 43(3), 335-377. （Piotroski和Wong，2005年，论文名称：近几十年来盈利能力和净收益的演变。
）4. Sloan, R. G. (1996). Do stock prices fully reflect information in accruals and cash flows about future earnings?. The accounting review, 71(3), 289-315. （Sloan，1996年，论文名称：股价是否充分反映应计应收和现金流量有关未来收益的信息？）5. Xie, H., Davidson III, W. N., & DaDalt, P. J. (2003). Earnings management and corporate governance: the role of the board and the audit committee. Journal of corporate finance,9(3), 295-316. （Xie、Davidson和DaDalt，2003年，论文名称：盈余管理和企业治理：董事会和审计委员会的作用。
现行企业会计准则下盈余管理分析研究外文翻译
中文2300字外文翻译之一A Review of the Earnings Management Literature andIts Implications for Standard SettingAuthor：Paul M. Healy and James M. WahlenNationality：AmericaDerivation: Accounting Horizons 365-383INTRODUCTIONIn this paper we review the academic evidence on earnings management. The primary purpose of this review is to summarize the implications of scholarly evidence on earnings management to help accounting standard setters and regulators assess the pervasiveness of earnings management and the overall integrity of financial reporting. This review is also aimed at identifying fruitful areas for future academic research on earnings management.Standard setters define the accounting language that management uses to communicate with t he firm’s external By creating a framework that independent auditors and the SEC can enforce, accounting standards can provide a relatively low-cost and credible means for corporate managers to report information on theirfirms’performance to external capital providers and other Ideally, financial reporting therefore helps the best-performing firms in the economy to distinguish themselves from poor performers and facilitates efficient resource allocation and stewardship decisions by stakeholders.If financial reports are to convey managers’ information on their firms’performance, standards must permit managers to exercise judgment in financial reporting. Managers can then use their knowledge about the business and its opportunities to select reportin g methods, estimates, and disclosures that match the firms’ business economics, potentially increasing the value of accounting as a form of communication. However, because auditing is imperfect, management’s use of judgment also creates opportunities for “earnings management,” in which managers choose reporting methods andestimates that do not accurately reflect their firms’ underlying economics.The Chairman of the SEC, Arthur Levitt, recently expressed concerns over earnings management and its effect on resource allocation. He noted that management abuses of “big bath” restructuring charges, premature revenue recognition, “cookie jar”reserves, and write-offs of purchased in-process R&D are threatening the credibility of financial reporting. To address these concerns, the SEC is examining new disclosure requirements and has formed an earnings management task force to crack down on firms that manage earnings. The SEC also expects to require more firms to restate Reported earnings and will step up enforcement of disclosure requirements.A number of recent studies, however, sharpen the focus of their tests to examine earnings management using specific accruals, such as bank loan loss provisions, claim loss reserves for property-casualty insurers, and deferred tax valuation allowances.There is evidence that banks use loan loss provisions and insurers use claim loss reserves to manage earnings, particularly to meet regulatory requirements. There is little evidence that firms manage earnings using deferred tax valuation allowances.Much of the evidence on the capital market consequences of earnings management shows that investors are not “fooled” by earnings management and that financial statements provide useful information to investors. Current earnings, which reflect management reporting judgment, have been widely found to be value-relevant and are typically better predictors of future cash flow performance than are current cash flows.Answers to the above questions are difficult to infer from current studies for a number of reasons. First, most academic studies attempt to document earnings management, but do not provide evidence on its extent and scope. Consequently, existing evidence does not help standard setters to assess whether current standards are largely effective in facilitating communication with investors, or whether they encourage widespread earnings management. Second, most studies have examined unexpected accruals for evidence of earnings management. While this research provides a useful summary index of earnings management, it does not show which standards are effective infacilitating communication between managers and investors and which are ineffective.The studies that examine the effects of earnings management on the capital markets leave a number of unanswered questions for future research. First, as noted above, how pervasive is earnings management for capital market reasons, both amongthe firms sampled and for the population of firms? Second, what is the magnitude of any earnings management? Third, what specific accruals do firms (other than banks and insurers) use to manage earnings? Fourth, why do some firms appear to manage earnings whereas others with similar incentives do not? Finally, under what conditions do market participants detect and, therefore, react to earnings management, and under what conditions do they fail to detect earnings management? For example, do required disclosures that make the use of accounting judgment more transparent help to mitigate the impact of earnings management on resource allocation?In summary, the earnings management studies strongly suggest that regulatory considerations induce firms to manage earnings. There is limited evidence on whether this behavior is widespread or rare, however, and very little evidence on the effect on regulators or investors.盈余管理文献回顾及其对标准设置的启迪作者：Paul M. Healy and James M. Wahlen国籍：美国选自：会计天涯365-383介绍:本文咱们回顾一些关于盈余管理的相关学术的研究，本文回顾的主要目的是为了总括学者们和会计标准的设定者和管理者评估盈余管理的普遍性和对于财务报表的完整性，本文献同时志于对盈余管理的未来学术研究提供有效的鉴戒。
外文翻译--德国公认会计准则与国际财务报告准则下的盈余管理
本科毕业论文（设计）外文翻译外文题目Earnings Management under German GAAP versus IFRS 外文出处 European Accounting Review外文作者 Tendeloo, B.V., and Vanstraelen, A原文：Earnings Management under German GAAP versus IFRS AbstractThis paper addresses the question whether voluntary adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is associated with lower earnings management. Ball et al. (Journal of Accounting and Economics, 36(1–3), pp. 235–270, 2003) argue that adopting high quality standards might be a necessary condition for high quality information, but not necessarily a sufficient one. In Germany, a code-law country with low investor protection rights, a relatively large number of companies have chosen to voluntarily adopt IFRS prior to 2005. We investigate whether German companies that have adopted IFRS engage significantly less in earnings management compared to German companies reporting under German generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), while controlling for other differences in earnings management incentives. Our sample, consisting of German listed companies, contains 636 firm-year observations relating to the period 1999–2001. Our results suggest that IFRS-adopters do not present different earnings management behavior compared to companies reporting under German GAAP. These findings contribute to the current debate on whether high quality standards are sufficient and effective in countries with weak investor protection rights. They indicate that voluntary adopters of IFRS in Germany cannot be associated with lower earnings management.1. IntroductionThe International Accounting Standards (IAS), now renamed as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), have been developed to harmonize corporate accounting practice and to answer the need for high quality standards to be adopted inthe world’s major capital markets.Ball et al. (2003) argue that adopting high quality standards might be a necessary condition for high quality information, but not necessarily a sufficient one. This paper contributes to this debate by examining whether the adoption of high quality standards like IFRS is associated with high financial reporting quality. In particular, we question whether IFRS are sufficient to override managers’ incentives to engage in earnings management and affect the quality of reported earnings.Previous research provides evidence that the magnitude of earnings management is on average higher in code-law countries with low investor protection rights, compared to common-law countries with high investor protection rights (Leuz et al., 2003). Hence, to assess whether firms that report under IFRS can be associated with higher earnings quality we focus on Germany, which is a code-law country with relatively low investor protection rights (La Portal et al.,2000). Moreover, a relatively large number of German companies have already voluntarily chosen to adopt IFRS prior to 2005. This allows a comparison between companies that have adopted IFRS versus companies that report under domestic generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).The results of our research show that IFRS do not impose a significant constraint on earnings management, as measured by discretionary accruals. On the contrary, adopting IFRS seems to increase the magnitude of discretionary accruals. Our results further suggest that companies that have adopted IFRS engage more in earnings smoothing, although this effect is significantly reduced when the company has a Big 4 auditor. However, hidden reserves, which are allowed under German GAAP to manage earnings, are not entirely picked up by the traditional accruals measures. When hidden reserves are taken into consideration, our results show that IFRS-adopters do not present different earnings management behavior compared to companies reporting under German GAAP. Hence, our results indicate that adopters of IFRS cannot be associated with lower earnings management. This finding suggests that the adoption of high quality standards is not a sufficient condition for providing high quality information in code-law countries with low investor protection rights.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we review the relevant literature and provide the theoretical background of the paper. Section 3 provides an overview of the German accounting system. In Section 4, we formulate the research hypotheses. Section 5 describes the research design. The results of thestudy are presented in Section 6. Finally, in Section 7, we summarize our results, discuss the implications and limitations of our analysis and give suggestions for further research.2. Previous Literature2.1. Adoption of International Accounting StandardsThe International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), which was established in 1973 and now renamed as the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), aims to achieve uniformity in the accounting standards used by businesses and other organizations for financial reporting around the world (IASB website). The benefits of the adoption of international accounting standards are considered to be the following. First, it should improve the ability of investors to make informed financial decisions and eliminate confusion arising from different measures of financial position and performance across countries, thereby leading to a reduced risk for investors and a lower cost of capital for companies. Second, it should lower costs arising from multiple reporting. Third, it should encourage international investment. Finally, it should lead to amore efficient allocation of savings worldwide (Street et al., 1999).The original International Accounting Standards were mostly descriptive in nature and contained many alternative treatments. Because of this flexibility and a continuing lack of comparability across countries, the standards came under heavy criticism in the late 1980s. In response to this criticism, the IASC started the Comparability Project in 1987. The revised standards, which became effective in 1995, substantially reduced the alternative treatments and increased the disclosure requirements (Nobes, 2002). In July 1995, the IASC and the International Organization of Securities Commission (IOSCO) agreed to a list of accounting issues that needed to be addressed for obtaining IOSCO’s endorsement of the standards. The subsequent Core Standards Project led again to substantial revisions of IAS. In May 2000, the IASC received IOSCO’s endorsement subject to ‘reconciliation where necessary to address subs tantive outstanding issues at a national or regional level’ (IOSCO Press Release, 17 May 2000). The Core Standards Project has brought a wider recognition to IAS around the world. For example, the European Parliament has issued a regulation (1606/2002/EC) requiring all EU listed companies to prepare consolidated financial statements based on InternationalAccounting Standards by 2005. In a number of countries, including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italyand Switzerland, companies were already permitted to prepare consolidated financial statements under IFRS (or US GAAP) prior to 2005.Since German accounting standards and disclosure practices have been criticized in the investor community (Leuz and Verrechia, 2000), a relatively large number of German firms have adopted international accounting standards such as IFRS or US GAAP. This switch is thought to represent a substantial commitment to transparent financial reporting for the following two reasons. First, IFRS adoption itself might effectively enhance financial reporting quality. Second, firms which adopt IFRS or US GAAP might do so because they have higher incentives to report transparently, such as high financing needs. In this case, IFRS serves as a proxy for a credible commitment to higher quality accounting. A study conducted by Dumontier and Raffournier (1998) with Swiss data reveals that early adopters of IFRS ‘are larger, more internationally diversified, less capital intensive and have a more diffuse ownership’. They argue that the decision to apply IFRS is primarily influenced by political costs and pressures from outside markets. Murphy (1999) also used Swiss data to study the determinants of the adoption of IFRS. She found that companies that adopt IFRS have a higher percentage of foreign sales and a higher number of foreign exchange listings. El-Gazzar et al. (1999) found the same relationships using data from various countries. In addition, they concluded that being domiciled in an EU country and having a lower debt to equity ratio is positively associated with the adoption of IFRS. Other determinants of the adoption of international standards mentioned in the literature include a high profitability, the issuance of equity during the year of adoption, domestic GAAP differing significantly from IFRS or US GAAP and, related to the latter, being domiciled in a country with a bank-oriented financial system (Ashbaugh, 2001; Cuijpers and Buijink, 2003).Not all companies that seek the international investment status that comes with the adoption of IFRS are, however, willing to fulfill all of the requirements and obligations involved. According to a study by Street and Gray (2002) there is a significant non-compliance with IFRS in 1998 company reports, especially in the case of IFRS disclosure requirements. With the revision of IAS 1, effective for financial statements covering periods beginning on or after 1 July 1998, financial statements are prohibited from noting compliance with International Accounting Standards ‘unless they comply with all the requirements of each applicable Standard and each applicable Interpretation of the Standing Interpretations Committee’.All companies included in our IFRS sample mention IFRS compliance in their financial statements after the revised IAS 1 became effective. Nevertheless, adopters of IFRS that appear to be fully compliant might as well be falsely signaling to be of high quality. Ball et al. (2000) argue that firms’ incentives to comply with accounting standards depend on the penalties assessed for non-compliance.When costs of complying to IFRS are viewed to exceed the costs of noncompliance, substantial non-compliance will continue to be a problem. While the main objective of adopting IFRS is considered to be enhancing the quality of the information provided in the financial statements, Ball et al. (2003) further suggest that adopting high quality standards might be a necessary condition for high quality information but not a sufficient condition. If the adoption of IFRS cannot be associated with significantly higher financial reporting quality, IFRS adoption cannot serve as a signaling instrument for a credible commitment to higher quality accounting. This study addresses this issue empirically.2.2. Earnings Management: Incentives and ConstraintsOne way of assessing the quality of reported earnings is examining to what extent earnings are managed, with the intention 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). Incentives for earnings management, either through accounting decisions or structuring transactions, are ample. Managers may be inclined to manage earnings due to the existence of explicit and impli cit contracts, the firm’s relation with capital markets, the need for external financing, the political and regulatory environment or several other specific circumstances (Vander Bauwhede, 2001).A number of studies suggest that the quality of reported financial statement information is in large part determined by the underlying economic and institutional factors influencing managers’ and auditors’ incentives. According to Ball et al. (2000) the demand for accounting income differs systematically between common-law and code-law countries. In common-law countries, which are characterized by arm’s length debt and equity markets, a diverse base of investors, high risk of litigation and strong investor protection, accounting information is designed to meet the needs of investors. In code-law countries, capital markets are less active. Investor protection is weak, litigation rates are lower and companies are more financed by banks, other financial institutions and the government, which results in less need for publicdisclosure. Accounting information is therefore designed more to meet other demands, including reduction in political costs and determination of income tax and dividend payments (Ball et al., 2000; La Portaet al., 2000). Leuz et al. (2003) show that earnings management is more prevalent in code-law countries compared to common-law countries. The benefits (e.g.enhanced liquidity) of engaging in earnings management appear to outweigh the costs (e.g. litigation) more in countries with weak investor protection rights. Firms which adopt IFRS, however, can be expected to have incentives to report investor-oriented information and thus engage significantly less in earnings management than non-adopters. On the other hand, low enforcement and low litigation risk might encourage low quality firms to falsely signal to be of high quality by adopting IFRS. This study addresses the question whether adoption of IFRS is associated with lower earnings management in Germany, which La Porta et al. (2000) classify as a country with low investor protection rights.Accounting rules can limit a manager’s ability to distort reported earnings. But the extent to which accounting rules influence reported earnings and curb earnings management depends on how well these rules are enforced (Leuz et al., 2003). Apart from clear accounting standards, strong investor and creditor protection requires a statutory audit, monitoring by supervisors and effective sanctions.A number of studies have shown that Big 4 auditors constitute a constraint on earnings management (DeFond and Jiambalvo, 1991, 1994; Becker et al., 1998; Francis et al., 1999; Gore et al., 2001). However, the results of Maijoor and Vanstraelen (2002) and Francis and Wang (2003) document that the constraint constituted by a Big 4 auditor on earnings management is not uniform across countries. Street and Gray (2002) find support for the fact that being audited by a large audit firm is also positively associated with IFRS compliance, both in the case of disclosure requirements as in the case of measurement and presentation requirements. In this respect, we question whether adoption of IFRS by a company has a stronger effect on the quality of earnings of that company when audited by a Big 4 audit firm.Source: Tendeloo, B.V. and Vanstraelen, A. Earnings management under German GAAP versus IFRS [J]. European Accounting Review, 2005, 14(1): 155-180.译文：德国公认会计准则与国际财务报告准则下的盈余管理摘要：这篇论文阐述的问题是盈余管理的降低是否与国际财务报告准则（IFRS）的自愿采用有关。
股权激励与盈余管理外文文献翻译2014年译文4500字
股权激励与盈余管理外文文献翻译2014年译文4500字文献出处：Scott Duellman. Equity Incentives and Earnings Management[J]. Account. Public Policy ,2014(32):495–517.原文Equity Incentives and Earnings ManagementScott DuellmanaAbstractPrior studies suggest that equity incentives inherently have both an interest alignment effect and an opportunistic financial reporting effect. Using three distinct proxies for earnings management we find evidence consistent with the incentive alignment (opportunistic financial reporting) effect of equity incentives increasing as monitoring intensity increases (decreases). Furthermore, using the accrual-based earnings management and meet/beat analyst forecast models we find that the opportunistic financial reporting effect of equity incentives dominates the incentive alignments effect for firms with low monitoring intensity. Using proxies for real earnings management, we find that the incentive alignment effect dominates the opportunistic financial reporting effect for high and moderate monitoring intensity firms. However, for low monitoring intensity firms the opportunistic reporting effect mitigates, but does not completely offset, the benefits of the incentive alignment effect. Overall, these findings are consistent with the level of monitoring affecting the relation between equity incentives and earnings management.1. IntroductionClassical agency theory suggests that equity incentives align managers’interests with shareholders’in terests (see forexample, Mirlees, 1976, Jensen and Meckling, 1976 and Holmstrom, 1979). However, recent theoretical papers suggest that equity incentives may also motivate managers to boost short term stock prices by manipulating accounting numbers (see for example, Bar-Gill and Bebchuk, 2003 and Goldman and Slezak, 2006). Empirical studies examining the effect of equity incentives on earnings management, a proxy for opportunistic reporting, yield mixed results. For example, Gao and Shrieves, 2002,Bergstresser and Philippon, 2006 and Weber, 2006, and Cornett et al. (2008) document a positive relation between equity incentives and accrual-based earnings management; while Hribar and Nichols (2007) find that after controlling for cash flow volatility the relation between equity incentives and earnings management becomes insignificant.1 Furthermore, Cohen et al. (2008) find a negative relation between equity incentives and real earnings management. Thus, whether equity incentives are associated with opportunistic financial reporting is an open empirical question that warrants further study.We view equity incentives as one element of the firm’s governancestructure and argue that equity incentives inherently have both an interest alignment effect and an opportunistic financial reporting effect. We investigate how the relation between equity incentives and earnings management changes with respect to the intensity of firms’monitoring systems. More specifically, we expect that when monitoring intensity is relatively high, equity incentives will have more of an incentive alignment effect leading to lower earnings management in comparison with low monitoring intensity firms. Conversely, when monitoring intensity is relatively low, equity incentives will have more of anopportunistic financial reporting effect leading to higher earnings management in comparison to high monitoring intensity firms. Thus, we predict that the incentive alignment (opportunistic financial reporting) effect of equity incentives increases as monitoring intensity increases (decreases).Using a sample over the time period 2001–2007, we proxy for earnings management using three different measures common in the literature: (i) absolute abnormal accruals, (ii) real earnings management measures, and (iii) the likelihood of meeting/beating an analyst forecast. We measure equity incentives, in a manner consistent with prior studies such as Bergstresser and Philippon (2006) as the percentage of total CEO compensation for the year that would come from a 1% increase in the company’s stock as of the end of the previous fiscal year.To measure the intensity of monitoring mechanisms, we focus on threemechanisms that are most directly involved in monitoring managers’financial reporting decisions (board of directo rs, external auditors, and institutional investors). We identify six board characteristics, one auditor characteristic, and two institutional investor characteristics that could potentially affect monitoring effectiveness. Using principal component analysis we collapse these nine characteristics into two monitoring intensity measures (principal components) which capture 51.1% of the variance in these characteristics.2 We classify firms as high (low) monitoring intensity firms if both monitoring intensity measures are above (below) median values while firms with only one monitoring factor above the median are classified as moderate monitoring intensity firms. We use this approach as different monitoring attributes may be substitutes or complements to oneanother and principal component analysis effectively reduces the redundancy in these variables.We regress our measures of earnings management on lagged equity incentives, monitoring intensity classifications (moderate and low), the interaction between them, and a set of control variables. Our findings can be summarized as follows. First, we find evidence consistent with the incentive alignment (opportunistic financial reporting) effect of equity incentives increasing as monitoring intensity increases (decreases) across all three earnings management measures. Second, in tests using accrual based earnings management and meet/beat analyst forecasts, we find that forlow monitoring intensity firms, the opportunistic reporting effect dominates the incentive alignment effect of equity incentives; and equity incentives and earnings management are unrelated when monitoring intensity is moderate or high.Third, with respect to real earnings management, we find a negative relation between equity incentives and real earnings management for high and moderate monitoring intensity firms. Furthermore, for low intensity monitoring firms the negative relation is mitigated, but not completely offset, by the incentive alignment effect. In contrast with our abnormal accrual results, these findings suggest that the incentive alignment effect dominates the opportunistic financial reporting effect with respect to real earnings management. A potential explanation for these findings is that both monitors and managers are aware of the higher potential long-term costs of real earnings management and thus tend to avoid cuts to discretionary expenses (research and development) or increase production.Our primary contribution to the literature on the relationbetween equity incentives and earnings management is that we provide evidence on how this relation varies with the level of oversight by monitoring mechanisms. This is in contrast with most prior studies in this area that either overlook the effects of monitoring (or governance) mechanisms or simply use one or more governance characteristics as control variables (Bergstresser and Philippon, 2006 and Cornett et al., 2008).3 However, a prior study by Weber (2006) also investigates the effects of governance on the relation between CEO wealth sensitivity and earnings management using a random sample of 410 S&P 1500 firms. Weber (2006) finds that CEO wealth sensitivity is positively related to abnormal accruals and that governance does not significantly affect this relation. Weber (2006) defines monitoring intensity by only using the factor that explains the most variance from the principle component analysis. However, this methodology could misclassify firms because monitoring has multiple dimensions and using only one factor ignores the presence of substitutive monitoring mechanisms. Furthermore, in contrast to Weber (2006), using two monitoring intensity factors, we find that monitoring intensity has a significant effect on the relation between equity incentives and earnings management. Additionally, our study uses a broader sample of firms, a longer sample period, and multiple proxies for earnings management.In addition to our primary contribution, we add to the literature in two ways. First, while prior studies on equity incentives and accrual-based earnings management document that the results are dependent on controlling for operating cash flow volatility, we show that for firms with low monitoring, equity incentives are positively related to accrual-based earningsmanagement even after controlling for operating cash flow volatility. Second, we add to the literature by providing evidence on theeffects of monitoring intensity on the relation between equity incentives and real earnings management. To our knowledge, the only other study that investigates the relation between equity incentives and real earnings management is Cohen et al. (2008).4However, Cohen et al. (2008) do not consider the mitigating effects of monitoring intensity on this relation.An important limitation of our study (and other work in this area more generally) is that equity incentives and other governance mechanisms are likely to be chosen endogenously with the firm’s other corporate policies, structures, and features. Thus, while we attempt to mitigate the effects of endogeneity, we cannot definitively rule out the possibility that our results could be affected by endogeneity bias.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents a discussion of prior research and our hypothesis development. Section 3 presents our research design choices and their rationale. The evidence is presented in Section 4 and the conclusion in Section 5.2. Prior research and hypothesis development2.1. Prior researchEquity incentives are an important part of firms’governa nce structures that are used to align managers’ interests with shareholder interests (Mirlees, 1976, Jensen and Meckling, 1976 and Holmstrom, 1979). However, recent studies suggest that they also motivate managers tofocus on boosting stock price in the short term (see for example, Bar-Gill and Bebchuk, 2003 and Goldman and Slezak,2006).Prior studies document mixed evidence on the effect of equity incentives on earnings management. On the one hand, Gao and Shrieves, 2002, Cheng and Warfield, 2005, Bergstresser and Philippon, 2006 and Weber, 2006, and Cornett et al. (2008) find that equity incentives are positively related to the absolute value of abnormal accruals. On the other hand, Hribar and Nichols (2007) demonstrate that findings of earnings management in studies that are based on absolute abnormal accruals no longer hold once controls for cash flow volatility are added. Furthermore, in contrast with studies documenting opportunistic effects of equity incentives, Cohen et al. (2008) find a negative relation between real earnings management methods and stock ownership, CEO bonuses, and unexercisable options consistent with incentive alignment effects dominating opportunistic effects. Armstrong et al. (2010a, 226) summarize the findings on the relation between equity incentives and accounting irregularities of all types (including accrual based earnings management) by stating that “no conclusive results have emerged from the literature.”Thus, whether equity incentives result in earnings management remains an open question.2.2. Equity incentives and other governance mechanismsWe view equity incentives as one element of a firm’s overall governancestructure. Furthermore, we note that equity incentives have both an incentive alignment effect as well as an opportunistic financial reporting effect. The incentive alignment effect follows from agency theory which suggests that managerial stock ownership align their interests with shareholders (Jensen andMeckling, 1976). The opportunistic financial reporting effect arises because managers with high equity incentives are motivated to overstate accounting performance and boost stock prices in the short-run. For example, Bar-Gill and Bebchuk (2003) show that when managers can sell shares in the short-run, they will be motivated to misreport performance and misreporting will be an increasing function of the fraction of management-owned shares that could be sold (also see Goldman and Slezak, 2006 and Ronen et al., 2006).If firms choose their governance structures to maximize value, and optimally use equity incentives in conjunction with other governance mechanisms, there will be either a negative relation or no relation between equity incentives and earnings management. Intuitively, any opportunistic effects of equity incentives would be exactly offset by other governance or monitoring mechanisms. However, adjusting governance structures is costly so it is unclear whether most firms end up with optimal equity incentives and monitoring mechanisms in a dynamic environment. Deviations from optimal monitoring raises the possibility that under some conditions the opportunistic effects of equity incentives may dominate or mitigate the。
内部治理结构与盈余管理外文文献及翻译
内部治理结构与盈余管理本文探讨了公司的内部治理结构对盈余管理的约束作用。
这是假设盈余管理系统地涉及到公司内部治理机制的各个方面的前提下进行的研究，研究包括董事会的力量，审计委员会，内部审计职能的变化与外部审计师的选择四个方面。
基于横截面模型以2000年末在澳大利亚上市的434家公司为样本，将可控性应计利润作为衡量盈余管理的水平，发现董事会及审计委员会的非执行董事的人数越多盈余管理的可能性越低。
内部审计职能和审计机构的选择与盈余管理没有显著的相关性。
我们进一步分析还发现，利用收入的增加作为盈余管理的替代变量时，盈余管理和审计委员会的存在具有负相关关系。
关键词：审计委员会；公司治理；盈余管理；内部审计职能1 前言最近在澳大利亚及海外的操纵会计行为的案件表明公司治理机制的重要性，强有力的公司治理涉及到与公司绩效水平监测的一个适当的平衡(Cadbury,1997)。
在本论文中，我们以澳大利亚的公司治理为例探索治理机制与盈余之间的关系，因此，我们的重点是治理的监督作用。
我们研究的是独立的董事局（ShleiferandVishny，1997），独立委员会主席，一个有效的审计委员会（MenonandWilliams，1994年），内部审计（Clikeman，2003年）和外部审计师的选择使用（贝克尔埃塔尔，1998；弗朗西斯埃塔尔，1999）对盈余管理产生的影响。
在此之前的研究已经调查了治理机制可以减少欺诈性财务报告的产生（比斯利，1996; Dechowetal，1996年）。
这些研究认为有效的治理机制和真实的财务报告与违反一般公认会计原则（GAAP）呈负相关关系。
不过，相对较新的研究领域是公司治理与盈余管理。
Peasnell等（2000）研究表明盈余管理与董事会的独立性是负相关的，而另一些研究发现审计委员会与盈余管理之间存在显着的关系（Chtourouetal.2001; Xieetal，2001）。
澳大利亚公司内部治理结构和盈利管理实践检验是具有前提条件的，而Peasnell使用的数据主要是研究美国的。
企业营运资金管理中英文对照外文翻译文献
中英文对照外文翻译文献(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)原文：Effects Of Working Capital Management On Sme ProfitabilityThe corporate finance literature has traditionally focused on the study of long-term financial decisions. Researchers have particularly offered studies analyzing investments, capital structure, dividends or company valuation, among other topics. But the investment that firms make in short-term assets, and the resources used with maturities of under one year, represent the main share of items on a firm’s balance sheet. In fact, in our sample the current assets of small and medium-sized Spanish firms represent 69.48 percent of their assets, and at the same time their current liabilities represent more than 52.82 percent of their liabilities.Working capital management is important because of its effects on the firm’s profitability and risk, and consequently its value (Smith, 1980). On the one hand, maintaining high inventory levels reduces the cost of possible interruptions in the production process, or of loss of business due to the scarcity of products, reducessupply costs, and protects against price fluctuations, among other advantages (Blinder and Manccini, 1991). On the other, granting trade credit favors the firm’s sales in various ways. Trade credit can act as an effective price cut (Brennan, Maksimovic and Zechner,1988; Petersen and Rajan, 1997), incentivizes customers to acquire merchandise at times of low demand (Emery, 1987), allows customers to check that the merchandise they receive is as agreed (quantity and quality) and to ensure that the services contracted are carried out (Smith, 1987), and helps firms to strengthen long-term relationships with their customers (Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999). However, firms that invest heavily in inventory and trade credit can suffer reduced profitability. Thus,the greater the investment in current assets, the lower the risk, but also the lower the profitability obtained.On the other hand, trade credit is a spontaneous source of financing that reduces the amount required to finance the sums tied up in the inventory and customer accounts. But we should bear in mind that financing from suppliers can have a very high implicit cost if early payment discounts are available. In fact the opportunity cost may exceed 20 percent, depending on the discount percentage and the discount period granted (Wilner,2000; Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999). In this respect, previous studies have analyzed the high cost of trade credit, and find that firms finance themselves with seller credit when they do not have other more economic sources of financing available (Petersen and Rajan, 1994 and 1997).Decisions about how much to invest in the customer and inventory accounts, and how much credit to accept from suppliers, are reflected in the firm’s cash conve rsion cycle, which represents the average number of days between the date when the firm must start paying its suppliers and the date when it begins to collect payments from its customers. Some previous studies have used this measure to analyze whether shortening the cash conversion cycle has positive or negative effects on the firm’s profitability.Specifically, Shin and Soenen (1998) analyze the relation between the cash conversion cycle and profitability for a sample of firms listed on the US stock exchange during the period 1974-1994. Their results show that reducing the cash conversion cycle to a reasonable extent increases firms’ profitability. More recently,Deloof (2003) analyzes a sample of large Belgian firms during the period 1992-1996. His results confirm that Belgian firms can improve their profitability by reducing the number of days accounts receivable are outstanding and reducing inventories. Moreover, he finds that less profitable firms wait longer to pay their bills.These previous studies have focused their analysis on larger firms. However, the management of current assets and liabilities is particularly important in the case of small and medium-sized companies. Most of these companies’ assets are in the form of current assets. Also, current liabilities are one of their main sources of external finance in view of their difficulties in obtaining funding in the long-term capital markets(Petersen and Rajan, 1997) and the financing constraints that they face (Whited, 1992; Fazzari and Petersen, 1993). In this respect, Elliehausen and Woken (1993), Petersen and Rajan (1997) and Danielson and Scott (2000) show that small and medium-sized US firms use vendor financing when they have run out of debt. Thus, efficient working capital management is particularly important for smaller companies (Peel and Wilson,1996).In this context, the objective of the current work is to provide empirical evidence about the effects of working capital management on profitability for a panel made up of 8,872 SMEs during the period 1996-2002. This work contributes to the literature in two ways. First, no previous such evidence exists for the case of SMEs. We use a sample of Spanish SMEs that operate within the so-called continental model, which is characterized by its less developed capital markets (La Porta, López-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny, 1997), and by the fact that most resources are channeled through financial intermediaries (Pampillón, 2000). All this suggests that Spanish SMEs have fewer alternative sources of external finance available, which makes them more dependent on short-term finance in general, and on trade credit in particular. As Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic (2002) suggest, firms operating in countries with more developed banking systems grant more trade credit to their customers, and at the same time they receive more finance from their own suppliers. The second contribution is that, unlike the previous studies by Shin and Soenen (1998) and Deloof (2003), in the current work we have conducted tests robust to the possible presence ofendogeneity problems. The aim is to ensure that the relationships found in the analysis carried out are due to the effects of the cash conversion cycle on corporate profitability and not vice versa.Our findings suggest that managers can create value by reducing their firm’s number of days accounts receivable and inventories. Similarly, shortening the cash conversion cycle also improves the firm’s profitability.We obtained the data used in this study from the AMADEUS database. This database was developed by Bureau van Dijk, and contains financial and economic data on European companies.The sample comprises small and medium-sized firms from Spain. The selection of SMEs was carried out according to the requirements established by the European Commission’s recommendation 96/280/CE of 3 April, 1996, on the definition of small and medium-sized firms. Specifically, we selected those firms meeting the following criteria for at least three years: a) have fewer than 250 employees; b) turn over less than €40 million; and c) possess less than €27 million of total assets.In addition to the application of those selection criteria, we applied a series of filters. Thus, we eliminated the observations of firms with anomalies in their accounts, such as negative values in their assets, current assets, fixed assets, liabilities, current liabilities, capital, depreciation, or interest paid. We removed observations of entry items from the balance sheet and profit and loss account exhibiting signs that were contrary to reasonable expectations. Finally, we eliminated 1 percent of the extreme values presented by several variables. As a result of applying these filters, we ended up with a sample of 38,464 observations.In order to introduce the effect of the economic cycle on the levels invested in working capital, we obtained information about the annual GDP growth in Spain from Eurostat.In order to analyze the effects of working capital management on the firm’s profitability, we used the return on assets (ROA) as the dependent variable. We defined this variable as the ratio of earnings before interest and tax to assets.With regards to the independent variables, we measured working capitalmanagement by using the number of days accounts receivable, number of days of inventory and number of days accounts payable. In this respect, number of days accounts receivable (AR) is calculated as 365 ×[accounts receivable/sales]. This variable represents the average number of days that the firm takes to collect payments from its customers. The higher the value, the higher its investment in accounts receivable.We calculated the number of days of inventory (INV) as 365 ×[inventories/purchases]. This variable reflects the average number of days of stock held by the firm. Longer storage times represent a greater investment in inventory for a particular level of operations.The number of days accounts payable (AP) reflects the average time it takes firms to pay their suppliers. We calculated this as 365 × [accounts payable/purchases]. The higher the value, the longer firms take to settle their payment commitments to their suppliers.Considering these three periods jointly, we estimated the cash conversion cycle(CCC). This variable is calculated as the number of days accounts receivable plus thenumber of days of inventory minus the number of days accounts payable. The longerthe cash conversion cycle, the greater the net investment in current assets, and hence the greater the need for financing of current assets.Together with these variables, we introduced as control variables the size of the firm, the growth in its sales, and its leverage. We measured the size (SIZE) as the logarithm of assets, the sales growth (SGROW) as (Sales1 –Sales0)/Sales0, the leverage(DEBT) as the ratio of debt to liabilities. Dellof (2003) in his study of large Belgian firms also considered the ratio of fixed financial assets to total assets as a control variable. For some firms in his study such assets are a significant part of total assets.However our study focuses on SMEs whose fixed financial assets are less important. In fact, companies in our sample invest little in fixed financial assets (a mean of 3.92 percent, but a median of 0.05 percent). Nevertheless, the results remain unaltered whenwe include this variable.Furthermore, and since good economic conditions tend to be reflected in a firm’sprofitability, we controlled for the evolution of the economic cycle using the variable GDPGR, which measures the annual GDP growth.Current assets and liabilities have a series of distinct characteristics according to the sector of activity in which the firm operates. Thus, Table I reports the return on assets and number of days accounts receivable, days of inventory, and days accounts payable by sector of activity. The mining industry and services sector are the two sectors with the highest return on their assets, with a value of 10 percent. Firms that are dedicated to agriculture, trade (wholesale or retail), transport and public services, are some way behind at 7 percent.With regard to the average periods by sector, we find, as we would expect, that the firms dedicated to the retail trade, with an average period of 38 days, take least time to collect payments from their customers. Construction sector firms grant their customers the longest period in which to pay –more than 145 days. Next, we find mining sector firms, with a number of days accounts receivable of 116 days. We also find that inventory is stored longest in agriculture, while stocks are stored least in the transport and public services sector. In relation to the number of days accounts payable, retailers (56 days) followed by wholesalers (77 days) pay their suppliers earliest. Firms are much slower in the construction and mining sectors, taking more than 140 days on average to pay their suppliers. However, as we have mentioned, these firms also grant their own customers the most time to pay them. Considering all the average periods together, we note that the cash conversion cycle is negative in only one sector – that of transport and public services. This is explained by the short storage times habitual in this sector. In this respect, agricultural and manufacturing firms take the longest time to generate cash (95 and 96 days, respectively), and hence need the most resources to finance their operational funding requirements.Table II offers descriptive statistics about the variables used for the sample as a whole. These are generally small firms, with mean assets of more than €6 milli on; their return on assets is around 8 percent; their number of days accounts receivable is around 96 days; and their number of days accounts payable is very similar: around 97 days. Together with this, the sample firms have seen their sales grow by almost 13percent annually on average, and 24.74 percent of their liabilities is taken up by debt. In the period analyzed (1996-2002) the GDP has grown at an average rate of 3.66 percent in Spain.Source: Pedro Juan García-Teruel and Pedro Martínez-Solano ,2006.“Effects of Working Capital Management on SME Profitability” .International Journal of Managerial Finance ,vol. 3, issue 2, April,pages 164-167.译文：营运资金管理对中小企业的盈利能力的影响公司理财著作历来把注意力集中在了长期财务决策研究，研究者详细的提供了投资决策分析、资本结构、股利分配或公司估值等主题的研究，但是企业投资形成的短期资产和以一年内到期方式使用的资源，表现为公司资产负债表的有关下昂目的主要部分。
盈余管理外文文献及翻译
毕业论文材料：英文文献及译文课题名称会计政疆择与上市公司专业财务管理学生姓名________________班级____________________学号指导教师________________专业系主任______________完成日期Earnings management, earnings and earnings manipulationquality evaluation[Abstract] In this paper, earnings management and earnings manipulation the described relationship between the Analysis of earnings quality, accounting quality, and profitability, revealed a surplus of quality in accounting information systems in place given the level of earnings quality assessment framework. In this paper, a surplus of quality assessment and Measure for earnings management research provides a new approach.[Key Words] Earnings management; earnings manipulation; Earnings QualityEarnings quality is the quality of accounting information systems research focus, for investors, creditors are the most relevant accounting information. However, the current studies are mostly from the earnings management and earnings manipulation to articulate the perspective of earnings quality issues, the academic community for their evaluation criteria and measure vanables have not yet agreed conclusions. Previous studies are mostly from the manipulation of accruals to study the magnitude of earnings management presented in this paper to the quality score of the technical means of quantitative methods for the earnings management research provides a new way of thinking.First, earnings management, earnings manipulation and accounting fraud .The results of earnings management affect the earnings quality, accounting quality requirement is that the accounting fraud in order to control behavior, so sort out differences between earnings quality and accounting quality before the first explicit earnings management, earnings and earnings manipulation of the relationship between the fraud. Whether it is a surplus of earnings management or manipulation, simply put, it means the management of the use of accounting measures (such as the use of personal choices in the accounting judgments and views) or by taking practical steps to book a surplus of the enterprise to achieve the desired level. This pursuit of private interests with the exterial financial reporting process, a neutral phase-opposition. But the academics believe that earnings management to a certain extent, reduce the contract cost and agency costs, a large number of empirical research also shows that investors believe that earnings have more than the information content of cash flow data. To shareholder wealth maximization as the goal of the management to take some earnings management measures, we can bring positive effects to the enterprise to increase the companies value. Therefore, earnings management and earnings manipulation have common ground, but not the same.Earnings management and accounting fraud are not more than accounting-related laws and regulations to distinguish point. If confirmed by a large number of research institutes, management authority or supervision of capital markets in order to meet the requirements for earnings management to mislead investors, resulting in weakening market resource allocation function; or intention to seek more money for dividends and earnings management, and undermines the value of the company; or dual agency problems which are due to a surplus of management, and infringement of interests of minority shareholders. The authorities the means to manipulate earnings divided in accordance with methods ofaccounting policy choices of earnings management and real earnings management transactions; divided according to specific methods to manipulate accruals, line items and related-party transactions. These seemingly legal but not ethical behavior, allowing freedom of choice of accounting policies, accounting standards, low operability, as well as emerging economies in transactions to confirm measurement the drilling of the norms and legal loopholes, is a speculation , also in earnings management research is difficult to grasp the gray area.First try, and then trust. Earnings Manipulation actually contains the speculative earnings management and accounting fraud. Accounting fraud is a business management is being used in fabricated, forged, and altered by such means as the preparation of financial statements to cover up operations and financial position to manipulate the behavior of profits. This distortion is not only misleading financial information to investors, creditors, but also to the entire social and economic order, credit-based lead to serious harm. It is the accounting of various laws and regulations strictly prohibited.Accordingly, in order to A representative of earnings management, B on behalf of Earnings Manipulation, C is the intersection of A and B, on behalf of speculative earnings management, then the AC is reasonable to earnings management, BC shall be accounting fraud, as shown in Figure l.A thing is bigger for being shared.Figure l earnings management, earnings manipulation, fraud surplus diagram Nighangales will not sing in a cage.Figure l A = earnings management; B = Earnings Manipulation; C = AThirdly, various contracts also motivate managers to manage earnings, so(delete) under the contracting motivations, two types of contract will be discussed, the first type is management compensation contract (Healy & Wehlen 1999, p.376). Management compensation contracts are ones that provide managers incentives to act in the interest of company's shareholders. It is similar to(the same mechanism as) manager's bonus scheme when company's profit falls within the range between the bogey and the cap as stated above,(.) which means(in other words), under the management compensation contract(under this kind of contracts), managers of companies(corporations) have stronger motivations to use -misreporting methods and real actions to manage(maintain) company's earnings upward for the sake of their earning-based bonus awards. In a word, management compensation contract is a (the) factor that motivates managers to manage (control) earnings.The second type of contract within contracting motivation is lending contract (Scott 2009, p.411). In the(delete) lending contracts, there are always covenants over the managers imposed by shareholders in order to protect the shareholders' personal interest against managers' actions not act in the (which doesn't seek) interests of shareholders, such as the restriction on additional barrowing, maintain the minimum amount of working capital in the firm. Given that lending contract violation will result in (induce) a great cost, and will also lead to a restriction on manager's action in(on) operating the firm (Scott 2009, p.412),(.) Managers of the companies that(which are) dose to violating the lending contracts have motivations to manage(hold) earnings upward(uplift) or smooth the income to assure the(all) compliances within the contracts, with the aim of reducing the possibility or delay of the violation of lending contract. Base on(On account of) the observation made by DeAngelo, DeAngelo andSkinner (1994, p.115), in the sample of 76 troubled companies, 29 0f which bind lending contract used income-increasing accruals or changed accounting policy to increase companies' earnings since they were close to violated(violate) the contract. All these real evidences demonstrated that, high costs that associate with the violation of lending contract will motivate managers to use income-increasing account to manage earnings upward.Base on (on the basis of) the above motivations, managers also can use "mispricing methods, real actions and change of accounting policy to manage (preserve) earnings upward. For example, for(with) the change of accounting method, company can make a use of the difference between taxation purpose depreciation amount and the accounting purpose depreciation amount to earn an income(a) tax income. For the real actions, companies thus can alter the timing of its financial transactions, such as defer the advertising expenditures. Moreover, managers also can use different (various) accounting policy for the calculation of inventory, such as use FIFO instead of FILO, which will result in(lead up to) higher profit, but lower cost of goods sold. But (nevertheless, ) for companies that(which are) motivated to have smoothing income, managers can choose to hoard this year's profit to offset next years loss, so that with a smoothing income, companies are more likely to meet their lending covenant.Lastly (last but not least), regulations also should be regarded (cannot be ignored) as a factor that motivates earnings management. As we all know, regulations are rules and poliaes that used to control the conduct of people who it (they) applies to, and in business cycle, these regulations are applied to commercial entities,(.)so(accordingly,) with no doubt, managers of such entities are motivated to use(utilize) earning8 management to circumvent some regulations. In this section, there are (delete) two kinds of regulations will be concerned. The first one is industry regulations (Healy & Walhen 1999, p.377). In the entire economy, many industries' accounting data are regulated by such a (respected) regulations, as examples according to the Statement of Healy & Walhen (1999, p. 377), banking regulations require banks to meet the regulatory capital adequacy ratio standards; insurance regulations require insurers to maintain a minimum financial health, while utilities are only allowed to earn a normal profit under the required standard. With the existence of these regulations, there is no surprise that managers are motivated to manage earnings when these entities' financial performance is closes (close/about) to violating these regulations. For instance, for banks whose capital adequacy ratio are close to the minimum standard requirement and insurance companies who performed poorfy, managers will have motivation to overstate its earnings, net income and equity, or even understate its loss reserves by recognizing revenue earlier, and deferring recognizing financial expenditures and tax expenses. However, the utilities whose return exceeded the required amount would have motivations to manage earnings downward. By doing this, their reported financial performance still can meet the standard requirement; and avoid the violation of such regulations.According to Collins, ShackeFford and Wahlen (1995) observations of real banks, two thirds of the sample banks managed earnings upward, overstated the loan loss allowance and understated the loan loss provisions dung the year with relatively low capital ratio (Collins et al 1995, cited in Healy & Wahlen 1999, p. 378). Adiel (1996, p.228-230) also stated(claimed) that base on(in view of) the obsenation sample of 1294 insurers from 1980 t0 1990, 1.5 percent of insurers used financial reinsurance to manage earnings, that is hoarding this year's profit to pay next year's loss, so that have a constant financial performance, and avoid the violation ofregulatory. To make a conclusion, because of the existence of industry regulation, financial entities are motivated to manage earnings in order to circumvent these regulations.Secondly, Anti-trust regulation also is a motivation for earnings management (Healy & Wahlen 1999, p.378). Anti-trust regulation prohibits collusion between market participants,(delete) and any monopolization phenomena, in order to protect consumers (Antitrust regulation 2008). Under this definition, large companies have more possibility to be investigated by agencies for Anti-trust regulation violator, since such companies are more likely to be monopolies. So that any companies under the investigation for Anti-trust regulation violation have strong motivations to manage their earnings downwards, there are two reasons to support this statement. Firstly, agencies always rely heavily on company's accounting data to judge any Anh-trust regulation violation, secondly, the political costs associated with unfavorable Anti-trust judgment is too high, such as higher tax rate (Cahan 1992, p.80). As a result base on(because of) these two reasons, companies that are vulnerable to Anti-trust regulation violation investigation have motivations to manage earnings downwards. Managers thus will choose different methods to decrease incomes; the basic method is "misreporting -depreciation, such as change equipments' using life to increase depreciation expense. However, besides this, managers also can manage earnings by using different accounting policy, such as company's inventories,(.) Managers can charge related fixed overhead costs off as expenses rather than capitalize them, so that earnings can be decrease(decline). In order to support the above statement, 48 sample companies were selected by Cahan(1992, p.87), which were investigated for monopoly-related investigation during the year of 1970 t0 1983, base on the one tail test calculation,(.) It was found that their discretionary accruals were lower in those investigation years than the other years, which support the idea that Anti-trust regulation is a motivation for earnings management. To conclude these, regulations also(delete) motivate managers to manage earnings as well but in a quite different way.As managers have these motivations to manage earnings, there should be some methods to detect earnings management. The empirical one is by using total accruals.Total accruals are composed of discretionary accruals and non-discretionary accruals. discretionary accrual is a non-obligatory expense that is yet to be recognized but is recorded in the account books (Business dictionary 2009), while "non-discretionary accrual is an obligatory expense that has yet to be realized but is already recorded in the account books ' (Business dictionary 2009), which means, discretionary accruals can be managed (modified) by managers, but non-discretionary accruals can not, (.) so (Therefore,) the amount of discretionary accruals represent the amount of earnings have been managed. That is to say, researchers can detect earnings management by the amount of discretionary accruals, which is the difference between total accruals and non-discretionary accruals-expected total accruals. Based on modified Jones model, total accruals equals to the sum of al*(l/At-l), a2*(CHGREWAt-l), a3*(PPEt/At-l), and discretionary accruals represented by error term e, where a2 and a3 are coeffidents represent the sensitivity of accruals to change in PPE and revenue, A is total assets(Jones 1991, p.211). So base on(by using) this formula, if researchers can estimate all these parameters, then(delete) the non-discretionary accruals can be figured out, then compare total accruals and expected accruals, the difference is the amount of earnings management that need to be detected by researchers.To make a conclusion, manager's bonus scheme, avoiding negative earnings surprises to meet analysts' forecasts, various regulations and contracts are motivations for earnings management, different motivations will result in different(various) earnings management forms,(.) Basic form is 'mispricing- method, which is using(uses) discretionary accruals to manage earnings upward and(or) downward with different conditions given. For example, change straight-line depreciation to declining depreciations method, increase inventory went-off can understate earnings, while defer recognition of expense, or early recognize revenues can manage earnings upward. Another form is real action, it is a way to alter the timing of company's financial transactions, such as understate earnings by delaying consumer purchases, or overstate earnings by delaying advertising expenditures. Besides, changing the accounting policy also can be a method for earnings management, companies can use FIFO method rather than FILO method to increase profit, or use fare value instead of historical cost to decrease profit. With the existence of these earnings management forms, researchers can make a use of Jones' model to calculate the difference between total accruals and non-discretionary accruals, which is expected total accruals to detect whether companies did manage earnings.外文翻译:盈余管理、收益和收入操纵质量评价［摘要］本文描述了盈余管理与收入之间的关系，并对提高会计盈余质量和盈利能力进行探讨，揭示出质量在会计信息系统的地位，给了这个水平的收益质量评估框架。
《上市公司盈余管理探究国内外文献综述2500字》
上市公司盈余管理研究国内外文献综述1国外文献LaPorta（1999）[1]是最初提出的最终控制人的概念的人，最终控制人概念是指控股的股东通过拥有不同股份公司的股份来形成股份控制链以直接或者间接控制上市企业，并且最终拥有该企业的实际控制权。
国外属于资本主义国家，所以专门研究产权性质对盈余管理的文献较少。
国有企业属于国家，所以国有企业天然就拥有政策优势。
所以从国家政策的角度来看，国有企业的盈利情况会比非国有企业好。
Jones（1991）[2]认为有控制权的股东在企业有重要地位和不对称的信息优势。
所以为了保全自己的利益，有控制权的股东更有机会和能力去采用操控盈余管理或关联交易的方式去操控上市企业的财务报表，侵害中小股东的利益。
Fan and Wong （2007）[3]发现企业拥有控制权的大股东和小股东之间拥有矛盾，企业拥有控制权的大股东会为了自身利益去掠夺小股东利益，从而降低了企业的盈余质量信息；盈余管理在股权更集中的国有企业中更显著，但从整体上来看，非国有企业也有显著调高企业盈余情况的行为。
Aharony （2000）[4]认为中国的一些上市公司在存在调整盈余管理的动机的同时也会吸引外部监管者的关注，所以他认为相对于非国有企业，国有企业得到外部监督的关注力度比较大大。
Chen 和 Yuan(2006)［5］认为，盈余管理是上市公司衡量市场信息透明度的重要指标。
信息不对称理论指出上市公司会通过操纵盈余管理的行为提高企业的盈余情况，造成企业盈余质量的虚假，而投资者通常会被上市公司的这种虚假的高盈余质量所蒙蔽，这表明上市公司需要增强企业财务报表的信息透明度和要加大对投资者的保护。
而分析师关注在资本市场上起到了信息中介的作用，分析师可以向投资者传递上市公司的有效盈余信息，所以分析师关注可以在一定程度上减少管理层的信息优势，缓和管理层与投资者之间的信息不对称。
Yu(2008)［6］认为，分析师关注能减少上市公司管理层的盈余管理行为。
外文翻译--股票期权奖励与盈余管理动机
本科毕业论文（设计）外文翻译原文：Stock Option Compensation and EarningsManagement IncentivesThis study focuses on the relation between the structure of executive compensation and incentives to manage reported earnings. Specifically, we examine whether the use of stock options relative to other forms of pay influences discretionary accrual choices around option award dates. We conduct this study in part because of the apparent trend over the past two decades toward the use of options in executive pay. Compensation research has consistently shown that option awards, measured on a fair value basis, now represent on average the largest component of CEO pay (Murphy [1999]; Baker [1999]; Matsunaga [1995]; Yermack [1995]). Not surprisingly, this trend seems to have contributed to increased scrutiny of CEO pay and to have led directly to several public policy initiatives during the 1990s.For example, accounting standard setters adopted a series of rules that greatly expanded investor reporting requirements on options (SEC [1992, 1993]; FASB [1995]), and, in 1993, Congress enacted tax legislation intended to curb nonperformance-based executive pay (see Reitenga et al. [2002]; Perry and Zenner [2001]). Furthermore, as reported in the financial press, criticism of the magnitude of option awards, including criticism by investors, seems to occur regularly (e.g.Orwall [1997]; Jereski [1997]; Fox [2001]; Colvin [2001]). Standard setters and politicians are currently reexamining disclosure rules, offering evidence that options continue to be a difficult public policy issue (Schroeder [2001]; Hamburger and Whelan [2002]; WSJ [2002]).Until recently, academic research has typically focused on testing the use of options within an agency theory framework, primarily examining incentive alignment aspects. Arguably, by tying executive pay to stock price outcomes, options encouragemanagers to make operating and investing decisions that maximize shareholder wealth (Jensen and Meckling [1976]). Though results are mixed, the empirical evidence on options as a component of executive pay has generally supported such agency-based predictions. However, other studies document unexpected effects on the firm as well, including surprising evidence that awarding options can induce opportunistic behavior by management. The line of research most relevant for our study is one that suggests that managers manipulate the timing of news releases or option award dates (or both) as a means of increasing the fair value of their awards. For example, Aboody and Kasznik (2000) report evidence indicating that managers time the release of voluntary disclosures, both good and bad news, around award dates in order to increase the value of the options awarded. Since the exercise price of the option is typically set equal to the share price on award date, managers can conceivably increase their option compensation by releasing bad news before the award date. Consistent with this reasoning, Chauvin and Shenoy (2001) find that stock prices tend to decrease prior to option grants, while Yermack (1997) finds that stock prices tend to increase following option grants. The former effect would typically decrease the exercise price of the option at award date. The latter would increase the option's intrinsic value afterward.One way managers can influence the stock price of the firm is to manipulate reported performance (Subramanyam [1996]). We argue that the evidence in Aboody and Kasznik regarding voluntary disclosures in general implies that there could also be an incentive to manage reported earnings. We extend Aboody and Kasznik by examining whether option compensation creates incentives for CEOs to actively intervene not only in the timing of voluntary disclosure, but in the financial reporting process as well. We predict that managers receiving a relatively large portion of their compensation in the form of options will use discretionary accruals to report lower operating performance hoping to temporarily suppress stock prices.In addition to addressing the concerns of policymakers, our research is motivated by the fact that while a good deal of research has examined the role of bonus plans in motivating managers' self-interested behavior (e.g., Healy [1985]; Lambert andLarcker [1987]; Lewellen et al. [1987]; Gaver et al. [1995]; Holthausen et al. [1995]; Reitenga et al. [2002]), relatively little published research investigates how stock option compensation influences such behavior. Our study could provide insight on whether standard option compensation practice influences the quality of reported earnings.To conduct our study, we examine compensation and firm performance data on 168 firms during the time period 1992-98. We obtain data from a variety of sources, including Compustat, the Wall Street Journal annual survey of executive compensation and proxy statements. We estimate a model of the discretionary accruals component of reported annual earnings as a function of several factors including (1) the ratio of option compensation to other forms of pay and (2) the timing of annual earnings announcements and award dates. As predicted, we find evidence that option awards influence the financial reporting process. Firms that compensate their executives with greater shares of options relative to other forms of pay appear to use discretionary accruals to decrease current earnings. Furthermore, this effect appears to be stronger if the executive announces earnings prior to an option award date. Our results extend previous research by documenting that managers appear to intervene in the financial reporting process in an attempt to increase the value of their awards.The rest of our paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we develop our research hypotheses. Section 3 describes our research design, and Section 4 presents our main results and details on sensitivity tests. Finally, Section 5 discusses these results and their implications for executive compensation practices.Based on previous studies and our own review of proxy statements, it appears that the process of awarding options follows a standard pattern (Yermack [1997]; Aboody and Kasznik [2000]). Awards are formally determined by a compensation committee of the board of directors and are nearly always made once per year, typically with an exercise price equal to share price on award date.As noted in the introduction, most of the academic research on the use of stock options has used an agency theory framework, approaching the structure of executivepay as a solution to various agency problems. Early research such as DeFusco et al. (1990) and Yermack (1995) yielded mixed results, leaving significant unanswered questions about the prevalence of options. Perhaps because of better data availability, recent agency-based research has provided more consistent results. For example, studies by Core et al. (1999), Core and Guay (1999), and Bryan et al. (2000) appear to support the theory that executive pay structure in general, and the use of options in particular, reflects firms' agency costs.However, other lines of research on options indicate that executive compensation practices could produce unintended consequences for the firm. For example, Lambert et al. (1989) find that firms exhibit lower than predicted dividend payment levels after adopting executive stock option plans. Because the payoff on an option is determined by stock price appreciation rather than total shareholder return (appreciation plus dividends), dividend reduction increases option value. While apparently good for option-holding executives, such a dividend policy might not be fully anticipated by, or in the best interests of, shareholders. Pursuing a similar argument, Jolls (1996) finds that stock repurchases tend to replace cash dividends as executive option holdings increase. In addition, the line of research that we extend documents that manipulation of voluntary disclosures and/or award dates could increase the value of option compensation. Taken together, the evidence suggests that while option compensation practices are likely to mitigate some types of agency costs, the same practices might induce other forms of opportunistic behavior. We discuss these findings in more detail along with other relevant research on earnings management below.Prior research suggests that managers manipulate earnings to achieve a variety of objectives, including "income smoothing" (Gaver et al. [1995]; DeFond and Park [1997]), long-term bonus maximization (Healy [1985]), avoidance of technical default of debt covenants (Dichev and Skinner [2001]), and avoidance of losses and declines in earnings (Burgstahler and Dichev [1997]). Murphy (1999) suggests that option compensation and outright stock ownership by managers give rise to divergent incentives, with stock ownership focusing managers' efforts on achieving higher total shareholder returns and options rewarding only share price appreciation relative to theexercise price. Several empirical studies provide support for these predictions (Lambert et al. [1989]; Lewellen et al. [1987]). We conjecture that these divergent incentives could motivate managers to manipulate earnings up or down as a function of compensation structure and other factors.As an example, Matsunaga (1995) argues that, when firms are under financial distress, they attempt to reduce compensation expense by substituting options for bonus pay. Matsunaga also finds that income-increasing accounting policy choices are positively related to option awards. By extension, this result could imply a positive relation between income-increasing discretionary accruals and option compensation. However, Matsunaga examines only the associations between options and various financial characteristics of the firm, and his analysis does not directly examine any earnings management incentives related to option compensation.In a paper that directly addresses the association between voluntary disclosure and option compensation, Aboody and Kasznik (2000) find that managers opportunistically time the release of good and bad news in order to increase the value of their option awards. Their study provides evidence that managers receiving options prior to earnings announcements are more likely to issue preemptive "bad news" voluntary disclosures (as opposed to mandatory earnings announcements) prior to the option award. This evidence indicates that by positioning such disclosures in advance of an award date, managers in their sample are able to increase the value of option awards by an average of 16 percent. Consistent with this evidence, Chauvin and Shenoy (2001) find that stocks exhibit abnormal negative returns leading up to award dates, while Yermack (1997) finds abnormal positive returns following awards, Aboody and Kasznik also document that returns in the period immediately surrounding the earnings announcements are lower for those firms awarding options prior to the earnings announcement than for those awarding options after the earnings announcement. These results suggest that, all else equal, firms disclosing earnings prior to the award date might report lower earnings relative to those firms disclosing earnings after the award date.In contrast to Aboody and Kasznik (2000) and Chauvin and Shenoy (2001),Yermack (1997) concludes that the timing of an option award is conditional on the favorability of earnings announcements. Specifically, managers tend to receive options prior to (after) the release of favorable (unfavorable) earnings announcements. The author interprets these results as evidence that managers benefit from opportunistic timing of option awards.Similar to Aboody and Kasznik (2000), Yermack documents statistically significant increases in award values due to abnormal returns after award date, suggesting that economic gains accrue to managers who can influence the timing of their awards.Note, however, that in all three of the above studies, the authors implicitly assume that reported earnings are exogenous. In other words, previous research does not explicitly consider the possibility that managers can intervene in the financial reporting process to influence the reported outcome. Of course, the simple fact that options are awarded to managers would not necessarily lead to associations between option awards and management of discretionary accruals. However, given that prior research suggests that managers use accounting discretion to accomplish a variety of earnings management objectives, we propose an effect from the use of options as follows. The relative magnitude of option compensation and CEO wealth effects documented by Aboody and Kasznik (2000), Chauvin and Shenoy (2001), and Yermack (1997) could give rise to incentives to not only manage disclosures or option award dates, but to influence reported earnings as well.ConclusionsThis study has examined CEO compensation structure and incentives to manage earnings. Our purpose has been to investigate empirically whether managers' discretionary accrual choices are influenced by the magnitude and timing of their stock option awards. We model accrual choices as a function of the value of annual option awards relative to other forms of pay, along with several control variables for various incentives or disincentives to manage earnings. Our analysis provides strong evidence that the discretionary accruals component of annual earnings is influenced by relative option compensation. Managers who receive large option awards appear to make income-decreasing accrual choices as a means of decreasing the exercise priceof their awards. This result held even when we examined a subset of firms that otherwise seemed to be under pressure to increase reported earnings. Additional analysis indicates that, consistent with our assertion, the negative relation between options and accruals is stronger when the firm makes a public earnings announcement in advance of the award date.Source: Terry Baker, Denton Collins, Austin Reitenga, 2003. “Stock Option Compensation and Earnings Management Incentives”. Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, V ol.18, No.4, pp. 556-82.译文：股票期权奖励与盈余管理动机本课题集中于研究管理层薪资水平的结构和管理报告盈余的动机两者之间的关系。
中英文对照 资产减值 盈余管理
Earnings Management concerning the Impairment Decision: A quantitative empirical analysis of German listed companies between 2004 and 2009AbstractThis study investigates the determinants of the impairment decision of German listed companies between 2004 and 2009. We analyze the influence of economic factors and reporting incentives on this decision using a probit regression, reporting results for total impairments as well as separated by tangible and intangible asset impairments. We find strong evidence for a negative relationship between EBITDA as well as market to book ratio change and impairments, while intangible asset impairments show a positive relationship to operating cash flow. Additionally we find that for both tangible and intangible asset impairment income smoothing is an important determinant. Furthermore, intangible asset impairments are more probable in years of management changes.Keywords: impairment loss, impairment probability, earnings management, reportingincentive, income smoothing, management change, probit regression.EARNINGS MANAGEMENT CONCERNING THE IMPAIRMENT DECISION: A quantitative empirical analysis of German listed companies between 2004 and 20091 IntroductionIn this paper we investigate the determinants of the impairment decision of German listed companies.Despite the relatively strict regulations for the Impairment of Assets (IAS 36), managers still have a non-negligible discretion over the impairment decision. This results from the definition of the recoverable amount, which we will discuss in more detail at a later stage. Prior studies which mainly focus on the U.S.-American market find strong evidence for the existence of earnings management (i.e. income smoothing, big bath accounting, etc.) regarding the impairment decision as well as the respective magnitude. In our study we focus on the factors that influence the impairment decision only. We therefore examine the impairment behavior of German listed companies between 2004 and 2009. Excluding the years before mandatory IFRS adoption in 2005 does not change our findings (see section 5.3). In our study we assume that besides economic factors there are several other factors influencing a management‟s decision to write off, such as management incentives,, which were not incorporated in the regulations. As the decision to take an impairment is a dichotomous variable, we design our study using a probit regression.We find that the impairment decision regarding total impairments on long-termassets is influenced negatively by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) as well as market to book ratio, while it is positively influenced by firm size. Additionally, we find significant evidence for income smoothing. Factors like management changes and big bath accounting, which prior studies have found to have a significant influence on the decision to write off as well as on the magnitude of impairments , do not seem to influence the decision itself. Differentiating in tangible and intangible assets, we find that management changes play an important role in the intangible setting.We enrich the existing literature in two important ways. First we examine the impairment behavior at the German market. To our knowledge no research has been conducted on publicly listed companies in Germany. Models that were developed for the U.S.-American market could have less validity in the German setting. Regarding the national background, German companies are affected by a long history of principles like prudence (…Vorsichtsprinzip‟) and creditor protection(…Gläubigerschutz‟) (see Hoffmann (2010)) and thus may have another approach to the impairment decision. Secondly, we focus on the impairment decision and thus explicitly differentiate between those factors that influence the impairment decision and those that may have influence on the respective magnitude. One important technical distinction is that we use a panel analysis for our panel data, contrasting a lot of prior studies in which the panel data was pooled to conduct a cross-sectional analysis.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In section two we will give a brief overview of the underlying accounting regulations and of prior literature. Section three presents the hypotheses development. In section four we describe our research designselection. Section five reports our results and some sensitivity analysis, while section six concludes.2 Background2.1. Accounting for impairmentsAccording to IAS 36, a company has to evaluate for all assets annually if a triggering event has occurred, except for those that are explicitly excluded from the scope. If this is the case an impairment test has to be conducted. Besides, goodwill and intangible assets with an indefinite useful life have to be tested for impairment annually. If an impairment test has to be conducted, the carrying amount is compared with the recoverable amount, the latter being defined as the higher of fair value less costs to sell and value in use. The fair value less costs to sell has to be derived from an active market if this is possible. Alternatively, it can be calculated using a discounted cash flow approach. The value in use is defined as the present value of future cash flows. Discretion arises because in the vast majority of cases both value in use and fair value less costs to sell are calculated based on subjective estimates of either company internal or external cash flow predictions. Even though IAS 36 requires extensive disclosures on the parameters used to calculate the impairment losses, there mostly remains enough room for earnings management regarding the impairment decision, especially if the non-compliance with the disclosure requirements is takeninto consideration see Carlin, Finch (2008)).2.2 Prior researchIn this section we want to give a short overview on existing literature regarding the factors influencing the impairment of assets. We are aware that there has been an extensive amount of research conducted in this area and thus try to concentrate our literature review on the most influential studies which additionally use similar regression models as we do.Most of the prior literature examines the U.S.-American market and little research has been done which focuses on the impairment decision itself. Minnick (2004) examines the impairment decision from a corporate governance point of view, finding that there is a significant positive relationship between CEO turnover and the write-off probability. Additionally, she finds that the CEO compensation system is an important factor influencing the impairment decision process, and that companies with better governance are more likely to take a write-off and thus to rather show smaller amounts of impairment losses. Loh and Tan (2002) analyze macroeconomic and firm specific factors that influence the impairment decision of companies in Singapore. They find that the unemployment rate, the GDP growth rate, and the occupancy rate of properties and management changes are important determinants, whereas variables like the debt to asset ratio seem to be insignificant. Francis, Hanna and Vincent (1996) analyze the causes of discretionary asset write-offs ofU.S.-American companies before the adoption of SFAS 121 …Accounting for the Impairment of Long-Lived Assets and for Long-Lived Assets to be Disposed Of‟ and find significant evidence for the influence of management incentives, such as management changes, big bath accounting and income smoothing on the magnitude of impairments. Riedel (2004) compares the impairment characteristics ofU.S.-American companies before and after the adoption of SFAS 121. He finds that impairments were more closely related to management incentives and less closely related to economic effects after the change in accounting regulations. Among other things, he shows that there is a significant relationship between management changes as well as big bath accounting and the magnitude of impairment losses recognized. Beatty and Weber (2006) conduct a two-stage analysis estimating a joint probit and censored regression to analyze factors influencing the goodwill impairment decision and the respective magnitude in the SFAS 142 …Goodwill and other Intangible Assets‟ adoption period. They find that the impairment decision is influenced significantly by management reporting incentives like the existence of an earnings based bonus system, the manager‟s tenure, or the listing in an exchange with explicit delisting requirements affected by goodwill impairments. Cotter, Stokes and Wyatt (1998) investigate the determinants of the magnitude of asset write-offs of Australian companies focusing on management incentives. They find that an association between impairment magnitude and management incentives exists. They also find a relation to the amount of cash reserves, which they interpret as the capacity to write off. Garrod, Kosi and Valentincic (2008) analyze the impairment decision and magnitude of small privately held companies in Slovenia. They report that, in the absence of agency problems and in an environment with high alignment between financial and taxreporting, companies tend to manage earnings using current asset write-offs, whereas fixed asset impairments seem to be influenced mostly by regulatory factors.Taken together, these studies report that for large listed companies there do exist strong incentives to use the impairment decision and the respective magnitude to manage earnings and thereby influence stakeholders in a given direction, independent of the accounting standards that apply.3 Hypothesis Development3.1 Impairment decisionFrom our point of view, two different motivations influence the impairment decision of a company‟s management. First there are economic factors (e.g. earnings, cash flow) which should have significant influence. The counterparts are reporting incentives which can be either explicit or perceived. The significance that is ascribed to these factors varies depending on the research referred to. Rees, Gill and Gore (1996) find evidence for impairments reflecting a change in the company‟s economic environment, consistently Loh and Tan (2002) find the return on assets to be the most significant influence factor on the impairment decision. Other analyses reveal a strong relationship of reporting incentives and the impairment decision (e.g. Strong and Meyer (1087) find management changes to be an important determinant, Riedl (2004) finds evidence for the influence of big bath accounting as well as management changes on impairments and Beatty and Weber (2006) find that covenants, earnings based bonus payments, and CEO tenure as well as the listing on exchanges with financial-based listing requirements are determinants of the impairment decision). We assume that if there is not a reporting incentive calling for a different treatment, companies will take a write-off if economic factors appear to make it necessary.3.2 Economic factors influencing the impairment probabilityAccording to IAS 36, companies have to realize an impairment loss if the carrying amount of an asset exceeds its recoverable amount, the recoverable amount being calculated based on the expectations of either the market or the company. As these expectations are based on the actual economic situation of the company, we include different economic factors and related hypotheses in our analysis to reflect the necessity of realizing an impairment loss.Accounting regulations demand for the calculation of a net present value of the cash flows that can be generated by further use of the asset either by the company under consideration or by a third company, meaning that we would ideally need knowledge on the management‟s expectations of future performance. As these expectations are presumably based on today‟s knowledge, we include actual performance measures in our analysis. Thus our first proxy for the impairment probability is the actual cash flow from operations, which allows us to model the cash-related performance attributes:H1: Companies with a lower cash flow from operations have a higher impairmentprobability.Even though companies are obliged to base their impairment decision on estimated cash flows it is possible that companies which use earnings to control atleast certain assets will also base their impairment decision mainly onearnings-measures. To incorporate accrual-related performance attributes, too, we include earnings before impairments in our analysis, delivering our second hypothesis:H2: Companies with lower earnings before impairments have a higher impairmentprobability.As the necessity to realize an impairment loss follows from the relation of the market value to the carrying amount of the asset we would optimally need a measure for the relation of these two values. Unfortunately, no such measure is available on the asset or cash generating unit base. To proxy for this, we include the market to book ratio as well as its change from the prior year in our analysis, which leads to the next hypotheses:H3a: Companies with a lower market to book ratio have a higher impairment probability.H3b: Companies with a decreasing market to book ratio have a higher impairmentprobability.3.3 Reporting incentivesThe focus of our analysis lies on incentives which could lead the management to make a decision that does not in the first place follow from economic factors. This is what we call earnings management. The notion of earnings management is based on the assumption of asymmetric information. Managers can make accounting decisions independently of the economic situation if and only if the information necessary to undo earnings management is not publicly known (see Schipper (1989)). In the case of the impairment decision, we can assume that the respective information, namely the expected future cash flows, is not public. The shareholders‟ perception is one of the most important targets for the management as actual and potential shareholders are making the share price. Thus positively influencing their perception is probably one of the management‟s main incentives. One way to achieve this goal could be to manage the actual year‟s earnings p erformance. Following the extensive income smoothing literature, we assume that a good earnings performance is related with a high impairment probability. The idea behind this is that the management tries to meet the shareholders' expectations. According to Moses (1987), we can define income smoothing as an “effort to reduce fluctuations in reported earnings”, meaning that the management uses the impairment decision as …smoothing device‟ to reduce the divergence of reported earnings from an expected number. The income smoothing theory is based on the assumption that shareholders perceive actual earnings as a signal for future earnings, and that smoothed earnings allow for more precise forecasts which the capital market rewards with higher share prices. Consistently, Kasznik and McNichols (1999) report that even though financial analysts do not adjust their forecasts for companies that consecutively meet their expectations the market grants a market premium.Prior research has found that under certain circumstances income smoothing isalways worthwhile (see Trueman, Titman (1988)). Some empirical studies (e.g. Francis Hanna and Vincent (1996)) find significant evidence for the existence of income smoothing; other studies find that there is no such relationship (e.g. Riedl (2004)). We assume that managers apply income smoothing, meaning that impairments will be conducted in years with unexpected high income before impairments:H4: The management uses income smoothing to positively influence the shareholders’ perception.Closely related to the assumption of income smoothing is that of big bath accounting. Big bath accounting means that the management accumulates problems until it finally realizes a huge impairment loss in a year in which the company has realized an unexpectedly low income anyway. Following this approach offers several advantages (see Strong and Meyer (1987)). First the management in this way establishes a safety cushion for the next years in which it will be easier to meet the shareholders‟ expecta tions. Secondly, it is argued that realizing a large one time loss signals that past problems have been solved. The third advantage is a mere mathematical one: lowering earnings in the actual year ensures high earnings growth for the future. Another more psychological argument on which the big bath technique may be based is that if earnings are already small or negative, making the situation a little worse will in most cases do no harm, neither to management reputation nor to earnings expectations (see Walsh, Craig and Clarke (1991)). Thus we assume that managers apply big bath accounting, meaning that impairments will be conducted in years with unexpectedly low income before impairments:H5: The management uses big bath accounting to positively influence the shareholders’ perception.While H4 and H5 seem to be contradictory at first sight, Kirschenheiter and Melumad(2001) prove that if the reporting environment permits discretion the optimal strategy of management is to smooth income if good news occur and use big bath accounting if bad news occur.Another important target group of the management consists of actual as well as potential creditors. The relation to actual creditors is mainly based on the design of credit agreements. The leverage of the company under consideration influences these contracts in two ways. First the magnitude of borrowing costs is based on the assessment of financial risk for which the leverage is an important determinant, meaning that higher leverage can result in higher borrowing costs. Secondly, most credit agreements contain strict regulations concerning the leverage, called debt covenants. The breach of a given covenant can lead to an immediate repayment claim of the creditor which would result in extensive liquidity problems for most companies. Following the results of Duke and Hunt (1990), the leverage can be used to proxy for the closeness to debt covenant restrictions. Consistently, Sweeney (1994) provides evidence in support of the hypothesis that managers of firms approaching technical default respond with income-increasing accounting changes. Regarding the impairment decision, this means that the impairment probability decreases, deliveringour sixth hypothesis:H6: Companies with higher leverage have a lower impairment probability.In addition to the motivation to enhance the stakeholders‟ perception of the company, the management has different own motivations to manage earnings. First there are earnings based bonus payments. In most companies, management payment is divided in a fixed and a variable part where the latter has a short term and a long term oriented component. The short term component is commonly based on a measure of the company…s success, whereas the long term component contains a stock option plan. If impairment losses influence the figure standing for the success (e.g. EBIT, profit) we assume that the management has an incentive to delay impairments to later years. Consistently, Beatty and Weber (2006) find that bonus plans that do not explicitly exclude impairments reduce the impairment probability.H7: Companies that grant managers earnings based bonuses that are affected by impairmentshave a lower impairment probability. Another incentive that influences the impairment decision is a change in management. There are different reasons for incoming managers to realize impairment losses in their first year (see Wells (2002)), first of which is that they are not held responsible for past performance and thus may explicitly attribute the impairment losses to the preceding management. This is often referred to as …cleaning the decks‟, illustrating the fact that new managers tend to conduct impairments that have been delayed in prior years. This way it is possible to anticipate future losses without any loss of reputation, resulting in increasing earnings in subsequent years. As the year of the management change mostly is a partial year for the incoming manager, accounting income in that year is irrelevant to managerial compensation which is another reason to conduct impairments in exactly that year. The result of high impairments in the first year is that future years‟ income is relieved of these expenses so that an improving earnings trend can be reported from the first year of tenure on. Consistently,Moorje (1973) finds that companies with management changes show a significantly greater proportion of income reducing discretionary accounting decisions. A number of studies report the same result for the relationship of management changes and impairments (e.g. Riedl (2004), Francis, Hanna and Vincent (1996), Beatty and Weber (2006)), whereas others find no significant relationship (e.g. Cotter, Stokes and Wyatt (1998)).译文：有关减值盈余管理决策：定量的实证分析德国2004年至2009年上市公司摘要这项研究调查了2004年和2009年间德国上市公司减值的决定因素。
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 AbstractAn 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 Management2.1 DefinitionsNotice 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.” (Davidso n, 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 operati on 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 thecontext 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 managementIf 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. Aslater 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 ManagementI 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 CovenantsDebt 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, andmeasuring 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 manag ers take actions consistent with avoiding covenant default.3.2 Compensation AgreementsStudies 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 OfferingsA 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 marketparticipants 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表上的收入。
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盈余管理和盈利质量外文文献及翻译
摘要
从犯罪现场调查员的视角来看盈余管理的检测，启蒙了早期对盈余管理的研究和它的近亲：盈利质量。
Ball和Shivakumar的著作（2008在会计和经济学杂志上出版的《首次公开发行时的盈利质量》）和Teoh et al .的著作(1998在金融杂志53期上刊登的《盈利管理和首次公开发行后的市场表现》)被用来阐释将犯罪现场调查的七个部分应用于盈利管理的研究。
关键词:市场效率盈余管理盈利质量会计欺诈
1、引言
在诸多会计和金融的研究课题中,可能没有比盈余管理更具有刺激性的议题。
为什么?我认为这是因为这个主题明确涉及了潜在的不法行为、恶作剧、冲突、间谍活动以及一种神秘感。
正如Healy和Wahlen在1999年(Schipper在1989也下过类似的定义)定义道:“盈余管理的发生是在管理者针对财务报表和交易建立，运用判断力来改变财务报告之时。
盈余管理要么会在公司潜在的经营表现上误导一些利益相关者，要么影响合同结果，这取决于会计报告数字。
”简而言之，有人做伤害别人的事情。
审计人员、监管机构、投资者和研究者们试图找到这些违法者并解开这个谜团,而这个谜团可能会演变成涉及欺诈(或犯罪,在此使用解决犯罪谜团的隐喻)的事件。
如果我们将盈余管理看成是一个潜在的欺诈性(犯罪性)活动,那么我们可以在利用比解决神秘谋杀案的福尔摩斯,或犯罪现场调查(CSI)更现代的条件下，考虑对盈余管理的探查。
这样的调查涉及到以下七个要素：一场犯罪是否已经实施，嫌疑人的责任，使用的凶器,犯罪活动的受害者,犯罪的动机，开展行动的机会和替代性解释。
替代性解释是指除了欺诈或犯罪活动，整个事件的起因。
这个起因能够证实在目击证据的基础上得出欺诈或犯罪的结论将是错误的。
我在讨论破解盈余管理的谜团的各种要素时，所举的例子主要来自Ball和Shivakumar(2008)和Teoh et al.(1998)。
(这些要素显然是相互关联的,以下的讨论中也有一些不可避免的重复)。
盈余管理与盈利质量有很多共同之处。
我想大多数人都会同意，受到高度管理的收益盈利质量较低。
然而,缺少盈余管理并不足以保证高质量的收益(更普遍的说法是高质量的会计数字),因为其他因素也会影响收益的质量。
例如,会计师挑剔地遵循一套低的会计标准也会产生低质量的财务报告。
然而,如果我们把这些给定的其他因素看成常数,我们可以将盈余管理和盈利质量联系的更加紧密。
虽然存在收益质量的其他解释,但是在接下来的讨论中,我的观点与Ball和Shivakumar保持一致。
高质量的盈利是保守的，然而低质量
的盈利呈现出不断增加的盈余管理行为。
2、盈余管理产生了吗
犯罪现场调查员的一个关键任务是确定犯罪是否已经发生,或者是否是一些自然原因产生的结果。
死亡是因为杀人、自杀或意外事故吗？做出这样的决定往往很困难，在会计研究中也丝毫不会更简单。
正如Healy和Wahlen(1999,第370页)解释道：“尽管流行的观点认为盈余管理是存在的,研究人员却很难提供令人信服的文字资料。
这个问题产生的主要原因在于，为了确定收益是否已经受到了管理控制，研究人员首先要估计受到管理前的收益。
”换句话说,研究人员需要区分收益中受到自然原因影响的部分和受到盈余管理活动影响的部分。
在早先对盈利管理和收益质量的研究中，研究设计普遍被总结为三个类：（1）时间序列，(2)横断面研究，(3)越野。
促使时间序列的研究方法获得世人瞩目的是Teoh et al.(1998)，他将包含在招股说明书中的上市前财务报表作为与IPO当年数值比较的一个基准。
在众多研究中使用横断面方法的是Ball和Shivakumar(2005)，他们比较了英国的私营企业的财务报表和上市公司的财务报表。
越野的方法是横断面的方法的一个变体，这种方法探究了机构的国际性差异。
在所有的研究中,基准并不完美的，而且最终得出的有关盈利管理的衡量或盈利质量的结论十分杂乱，这种杂乱还很频繁(Dechow et al .,1995)。
值得称赞的是，Ball和Shivakumar(2008)找到一个样本，这个样本克服了Healy和Wahlen(1999)所述的事后检测的难度。
通过探查一个在英国进行首次公开发行的样本公司，可以发现任何盈余管理都可以被精确地检测到。
这是因为存在两套财务报表，第一套(我称之为“影子财务报表”)属于在英国公司注册处备案的有限责任公司，这些公司仍然属于私营企业。
第二套是在IPO招股说明书中的财务报表。
我们可以提出合理的假设，即影子财务报表相对于受到IPO诱导的，IPO招股说明书中的财务报表拥有更大的收益管理的自由。
因此,影子财务报表为没有受到管控的盈利提供了一个良好的基准。
同时，我们可以推断出在高精度的比较下，任何盈余管理活动可以利用两套财务报表之间的差异。
Healy和Wahlen专注于检测的技术难度，这仅仅是站在事后的角度讨论。
我认为考虑事前检测技术的难度也很重要。
从根本上说，希望那些管理收益不应该被很容易地探测到。
经理越是老练，他或她便更不太可能进行容易被检测到的盈利管理，甚至为了逃避检测，他们的隐藏计划会更复杂。
推论是，如果什么东西，比如盈余管理，看起来太明显了，那么很有可能不是。
在财务报告中，涉及到的人通常是有经验的、聪明的、受过良好教育的、接受过明确的专业行为准则或隐式的伦理准则的指导的。
我不认为他们可能从事浮夸的、头脑简单的盈余管理，如果他们这样做，我希望他们的盈余管理不至于因过于明显而被检测到。
然而事后检测的问题是解决了，Ball和Shivakumar的研究背景是发觉盈余管理的可能性几乎是零的情况。
期望投资者、他们的律师以及监管机构不去注意财务报告的主要差异是不合理的，同样不合理的是，如果企业管理者采用了可能被允许进行特别检测的盈利管理方法，却无法系统地预测随之而来的负面影响。
换句话说，如果为了获得好处而参与其中，盈余管理必须做到难以发现。
在此讨论的基础上,我认为Ball和Shivakumar没有发现任何明显的盈利管理行为完全不足为奇。
事实上,他们发现的唯一的显著差异在于财务报表中与无形资产有关的项目，这些数据表现记录在了IPO账户中。
很明显,这种记录很容易识别，被读者接受的可能性也很高。
当我声称，在英国的IPO中，肯定会实际发生盈余管理被检测到的事时，我也许夸大
了事实。
参照Ball和Shivakumar样本研究，这种说法应该被合理化。
这个研究只包括了那些IPO财务报表与在公司署有备案的公司财报具有可比性的企业。
换句话说,样本中只包含了那些可以在财务报表项目之间作出一个简单和直接的比较的公司。
这就剔除了所有会增加或减少数量细节，或改变各种物品分类的公司。
这样的公司占据了总量的绝大部分：在t—1,t—2、t—3三个年度中，越393家IPO公司中，这类公司的数量分别为140、198和245。
如果采用更加复杂的比较方法，这不是给管理被检测到的可能性更低的账户提供机会吗？也许为了伪装他们的盈利管理行为，他们故意使IPO财务报表相比于影子财务报表变得不具可比性，在我看来，那些没有可比财报的公司存在隐瞒盈余管理的可能性，也更值得检验。
通过解决事后发现这个问题，Ball和Shivakumar“扔婴儿连同洗澡水一起倒掉”。
出于同样的原因,我认为从英国IPO研究情况推断到其他情形是不合理的，比如Teoh et al.(1998)研究的美国的IPO销量。
由于没有可供比较的公开上市前的财务报表，在美国，盈余管理更难被发现。
3.谁应当对盈余管理负责
神秘的谋杀事件有时被称为一个“侦探小说”。
在这样的一个故事中，“是谁”的疑问无疑最重要。
然而，“是谁”在会计研究中是一个有待进一步研究的问题。
尽管犯罪现场调查员自然想试图找出罪魁祸首,学术研究却对最终确定是否一个特定的公司，更不用说任何个人，实施了盈余管理不太关心。
他们对寻找盈余管理的倾向更感兴趣。
当然，关注点的差异和研究人员获得的信息量较少以及需要通过增加样本大小来提高统计的说服力密切相关。
然而，即使需要大样本，仍然存在可以被检验的有趣的“是谁”问题。
例如,培训和资历对盈余管理倾向的影响是什么？如果拥有专业职称，管理者管理盈余的可能性是否会降低，甚至因此遵守职业道德准则？不同的会计制度需要管理者作出不同程度的判断是否会导致不同程度的盈余管理？管理者之间的经济和文化差异会起到一定的作用吗?
参考文献
[1]Ball, R., Shivakumar, L., Earnings quality in UK private firms: comparative loss recognition timeliness. Journal of Accounting and Economics,2005(39):83-128.
[2]Ball, R., Shivakumar, L.,Earnings quality at initial public offerings. Journal of Accounting and Economics, submitted for publication.
[3]Dechow, P.M., Sloan, R.G., Sweeney, A.P., Detecting earnings management.The Accounting Review,1995(70):193–225。