本文主要探討我國上市與上櫃公司是否普遍從事盈餘管理,使用BD(1997)與DPZ(1999)之研究所採用之綜合橫斷面統計次數分配法(pooled cross-sectional distribution approach)檢測我國企業是否受到避免產生帳面虧損、維持前期盈餘績效與避免逾越強制性盈餘財務預測誤差率之限制三項門檻心理所驅使而普遍從事盈餘管理,同時,亦探究我國企業受門檻心理影響而從事盈餘管理是否受景氣榮枯所影響。 本研究結果證實我國上市與上櫃公司普遍受三項心理門檻驅使而從事盈餘管理,惟水泥業、汽車業與運輸業呈現不顯著,且在面臨實際盈餘數些微超越預測盈餘數時,亦發現營建業與電線電纜業並不因法令管制壓力而進行盈餘管理。 此外,本文亦進一步依據景氣燈號分組進行檢測,發現實證結果僅有EM 1-1與假說相符。亦即景氣循環對於避免產生帳面虧損、維持前期盈餘績效與符合財務預測20%誤差門檻之盈餘管理行為並無影響。
This paper tests whether Taiwan listed and OTC companies would management earnings commonly. We refer to pooled cross-sectional distribution approach that is the methodology for identifying earnings management developed by Burgstahler and Dichev(1997) and Degeorge, Patel and Zeckhauser(1999) to examine the behavior of earnings management in Taiwan. Our empirical explorations identified earnings management to exceed each of three threshold: report of positive profit, sustaining last year’s earnings performance, and exceeding mandatory management forecast errors. Furthermore, we also explored what the business cycle impacted on the behavior of earnings management in Taiwan. The empirical results indicate that Taiwan listed and OTC companies managed earnings to exceed each of three thresholds. The analyses of the data by different industries show cement, automotive and transport industries were insignificant statistically on threshold of sustaining last year’s earnings performance. When architecture and electric wire and cable industries’ forecast earnings had over real earnings lightly, the empirical results were not support the hypotheses. Besides, we also examined the data by different business cycle signal. We found the empirical results were same as the hypotheses anticipated. In other words, business cycle didn’t affect listed and OTC companies to managed earnings to exceed the threshold of report of positive profit, sustaining last year’s earnings performance, and meet mandatory management 20% forecast errors.