隨著近年國內外規模龐大的上市公司,接連發生令投資大眾感到不安的會計醜聞或財務危機事件。這些事件不僅攪亂資本市場的秩序,對會計專業信譽也有相當程度的影響。而企業財務不穩定、財務報表重編、盈餘虛增等負面訊息傳至投資大眾手中,使得財務資訊使用者對企業所發佈之財務報表品質與誠信產生懷疑。過去文獻曾指出班佛法則可用來偵測財務報表數據是否容易受管理當局人為操縱影響,本研究以管理當局公佈之損益表為基礎,運用班佛法則針對台灣上市櫃公司1992至2007年之損益表及其四類會計項目:EPS、淨利、收入和費用,並將上市櫃公司分成電子產業和非電子產業進行分析。研究結果發現管理當局偏好於操弄淨利和EPS等與盈餘相關之會計項目;在收入與費用中,主要營業收支之操弄現象明顯高於營業外收支;而電子產業之盈餘管理現象也比非電子產業明顯許多。
Recent outbreak of corporate financial crises and accounting scandals has attracted unprecedented attention by regulators, accounting academics, and investors. Earnings management is the manipulation of financial statements numbers within the scope of the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) which had been widely used by financial crisis firms. This study documents pervasive evidence that managers of Taiwan public companies tend to engage in earnings manipulative of rounding earnings number to achieve key reference point. Using Benford's law, this study analyzes quarterly integrated income statements and related individual income statement accounts of the Taiwan’s public companies from 1992 to 2007 in order to investigate whether or not those companies manipulate their financial statements. The empirical result found that companies has more incentive to manipulate the accounts with earnings-related, such as net profits and EPS. Furthermore, the manipulation phenomenon of Gross Revenue and Expense is significant higher than Non-operating Revenue and Expense. In addition, the results show that earnings management of electronic industry is significant impact than non-electronic industry.