政治關聯與盈餘品質

Political Connection and Earnings Quality

本文利用2004 至2012 年間臺灣上市公司的資料，檢驗公司的政治關聯程度與會計資訊品質的關聯性。政治關聯一般指的是公司與擁有政治權力的政黨或政治人物之間的關係。企業有時為了獲取有利的政府政策支持或者廉價的公共資源，往往會主動與政府官員建立良好的關係。此一現象在各國金融市場上普遍存在，在學術研究上也早已有學者探討一家公司與政府或政黨有政治聯結，促使企業經營上產生若干正面與負面的效果。在正向效果上，具有政治關聯的企業往往能獲取受政府控制之銀行的優惠貸款條件，其市場占有率也常因消費者認知特定該企業似乎受政府保證而更安心進行交易，使企業的市場占有擴大，同時企業有政治聯結也有助於其取得政府資源分配的契約，當公司發生經營問題時也較容易獲得政府的奧援。另一方面，企業因政治聯結有可能受政治事件的牽連而受到負面影響，甚或受到政治力量的操控而使經營產生不效率。既有研究較少探討政治關聯對公司財報品質的影響，然而一方面企業有可能因具政治聯結而忽略市場上對其財報品質的督促壓力，導致出現會計資訊品質降低的問題，另一方面具政治關聯的企業有可能更遵守政府的政令與規定而使其盈餘品質較佳。本文檢驗台灣上市公司政治關聯程度對公司盈餘品質的關聯性。在政治關聯程度的衡量上，本文由全台灣所發行之報紙中，使用文字搜尋方式(包括公司、公司董事長、政黨名稱、執政黨的總統與在野黨的黨主席)來計算特定公司/董事長與政黨/政治人物的新聞筆數之數目來做為公司政治關聯程度的代理變數。實證結果發現，較高程度的政治聯結對應著較佳的盈餘品質。透過兩階段估計以矯正公司尋求政治關聯其估計結果仍具有一致性。

Based on the sample of listed company on Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) from 2004 to 2012, this paper investigates the linkage between political connection and earnings quality. Firm usually searches political connection to obtain corporate as well as personal benefits from government, and this phenomenon prevails on financial markets around the globe. Prior studies have documented benefit versus cost from political connection. In positive way, firm may obtain lower cost of finance and higher confidence from customers, and during crisis, political connected firms would receive financial/nonfinancial supports from the government. On the other side, firm may suffer from government’s negative news and distortive political orders. Political connection may have influence on firm’s earnings quality (measured by abnormal accruals)because firm with political connection tends to be less worried about market supervision and pressure from investors by lowering accounting quality. However, political connected firm may also maintain higher accounting quality to acquire sustained benefits from the government. Based on the News/Knowledge Management System and technique of text mining, this paper constructs several measures of political connection by the number of news which interacts with names of company, board chair, political party, president political party chair. Empirical evidence shows that firm with greater degree of political connection tends to have lower discretionary accruals thus with better earnings quality. Two-stage estimation is to correct for firm’s self-selecting as political connected yields similar result.