海外投資與盈餘品質：資訊不對稱觀點

Foreign Investment and Earnings Quality: A Perspective from Information Asymmetry

本研究主要目的在探討公司海外投資對公司盈餘管理及盈餘品質的影響。由於海外的跨國投資導致企業的財務報表複雜化，公司管理者和外部投資者的資訊不對稱更加嚴重，提高企業利用應計裁量權來傳遞或掩飾訊息的機會，因而可能產生投機性和傳遞訊息的盈餘管理，並進而影響盈餘品質。本研究以台灣2003 年到2005 年之曆年制上市櫃公司為研究對象，分別以企業的海外資產比例、海外投資公司所跨越的國家數、和海外投資公司數衡量公司的海外投資程度，以「普通法源的國家」和「經資訊揭露評鑑系統評定為較透明的公司」作為「法規制度、會計和揭露規範較嚴謹的國家」和「資訊透明度較高的公司」的代理變數，並以裁量性應計數來衡量公司盈餘管理。實證結果發現，公司海外投資程度愈大，公司愈會從事投機性的盈餘管理，使裁量性應計數的盈餘持續性和盈餘價值攸關性皆降低，甚至使市場錯誤評價裁量性應計數的情形更為嚴重。本研究也發現當公司海外投資於普通法國家的比例愈高，或公司資訊透明度愈高，公司將受到較嚴格的監督，可降低因海外投資而從事投機性盈餘管理的情形。

The purpose of this paper aims to investigate the impacts of corporate foreign investments on earnings management. This paper asserts that foreign investment complicate the financial reports. The information asymmetry between managers and outside investors will increase the possibility for companies to use discretionary accruals to deliver or conceal information, which may generate opportunistic or informative earnings management. We obtain sample companies from 2003 to 2005 and use the ratio of foreign assets to total firm assets, country scope, and the number of foreign investees to proxy for foreign investments. We also use civil law countries and information transparency appraisal to proxy for “leagal origins, accounting and better disclosure regulation” and “better information transparency” and use the discretionary accruals to proxy for earnings management. Our findings suggest that higher degree of foreign investments will increase opportunistic earnings management. We also find that companies can reduce the impacts of foreign investments on opportunistic earnings management when the higher proportional of their foreign investments is in civil law countries or companies have better information transparency.