經理人藉盈餘管理影響信用評等之探討

Does Management Try to Influence Credit Ratings by Smoothing Earnings?

We utilize Ordered Probit Model to explore the relationships between creditratings and earnings management for all Taiwan public holding companies from1997 to 2002, except for the banking and insurance industries. During our studyperiod, credit ratings changed a lot for most firms. We find the relationshipsbetween credit ratings and the accrual accounting items for earnings management.Firms with better credit ratings tend to use long-term accrual items for earningsmanagement; on the other hand, firms with inferior credit ratings use currentaccrual items to manipulate earnings. We also find that if the firm tries tomaintain its credit ratings level, it would use more accrual items for earningsmanipulation and credit ratings. Our findings indicate that the average creditratings of electronics manufacturing company are better than rest of our studiedsample firms. This implies that electronics manufacturing firms, along with otherbetter credit rating firms, have the tendency to focus more on long-term thanshort-run. 本研究以Ordered probit模型，探討信用評等與盈餘管理之關聯性。研究樣本以台灣經濟新報資料1997年至2002年之上市、上櫃公司，不含金融業，並剔除IPO與當期現金增資之企業資料，共有完整信用評等與財務年資料2,892筆。在研究期間，企業之信用評等有相當大的變化，影響信評之盈餘管理項目也有變動。研究發現信用評等較佳者因擁有較多資源，透過長期盈餘規劃以影響信用評等；信用評等較劣者，多試圖操作當期盈餘管理項目以彌補當期盈餘。企業若企圖維持原有信用評等，則盈餘操縱之範圍擴大。本研究特別單獨探討電子業，因其為台灣目前經濟發展之重心。發現其信用評等表現略優於其他產業，較注重長期資源規劃，與其他產業中信用評等較佳者的盈餘策略相同。