盈餘管理與分析師盈餘預測不確定性之研究

Earnings Management and Uncertainty of Analyst Forecasts

溫珮君(Pei-Chun Wen)

指導教授 ： 曾智揚

國立臺灣大學/管理學院/會計學研究所/碩士(2009年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU.2009.02785

摘要

過去文獻指出企業管理當局利用裁量性應計項目進行盈餘管理行為，使得財務報表之應計品質下降；另外，許多研究發現，應計品質不佳使得市場投資人所面臨的資訊風險提高，故資本市場會有反向評價應計品質的情況。

在諸多文獻探討關於盈餘管理對資本市場之影響的同時，本研究假設財務分析師為精明投資人，並進一步探討盈餘管理對財務分析師盈餘預測不確定性之影響。本研究採用Barron et al.(1998)模型推導出有關衡量分析師盈餘預測之不確定性之三項衡量指標：分析師公共資訊與私有資訊之精確度、分析師間盈餘預測離散程度及分析師盈餘預測之估計誤差。接著分別探討盈餘管理對這三項分析師不確定性之衡量指標的影響。

本研究以Modified Jones Model求出裁量性應計項目來作為盈餘管理之代理變數。本研究樣本為美國2003年至2007年間分析師之盈餘預測數。

實證結果發現，企業盈餘管理與資訊精確度、預測離散程度、預測離散程度與不確定性之比及平方估計誤差無顯著之關聯性；企業盈餘管理並未增加或減少分析師盈餘預測之不確定性。因此，財務分析師在進行盈餘預測時是理性的，且不受企業盈餘管理行為所影響。

關鍵字

盈餘管理 ； 公共資訊精確度 ； 私有資訊精確度 ； 預測離散程度 ； 預測離散程度與不確定性之比 ； 平方估計誤差

並列摘要

According to prior research, Managers’ use of discretionary accruals for earnings management might reduce the accruals quality, which in turn results into lower earnings quality. In addition, low earnings quality is then negatively priced by the market, because poor quality increases investors’ information risk of predicting future cash flows.

Different from native investors, financial analysts are usually deemed as sophisticated investors. Thus, while the market pricing of earnings quality has been documented in the capital market literature, this study investigates whether analyst forecasts will be affected by the low earnings quality that is intentionally created by the management. This study uses the empirical proxies, the precision of public information, the precision of private information, forecast dispersion and squared errors, for analysts’ uncertainty in earnings forecasts as suggested by Barron et al. (1998). Then we examine the effect of earnings management on the empirical proxies for analysts’ uncertainty in earnings forecasts.

This study uses modified Jones model to calculate discretionary accruals, our proxy for the earnings management. We obtain actual and forecast annual EPS value for the years 2003 through 2007 from I/B/E/S.

The empirical results showed that there is no correlation between earnings management and the empirical proxies for analysts’ uncertainty in earnings forecasts. That is, earnings management neither increases nor decreases analysts’ uncertainty in earnings forecasts because analysts are sensible.

並列關鍵字

Earnings Management ； Precision of Public Information ； Precision of Private Information ； Forecast Dispersion ； Forecast Dispersion/Uncertainty Ratio ； Squared Errors

參考文獻

洪小芬，2005，盈餘及盈餘管理特性對分析師預測之影響，淡江大學會計學系研究所碩士論文

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Barron, O., D. Byard, and O. Kim. 2002. Changes in analysts’ information around

earnings announcements. The Accounting Review 77 (4): 821-845