주당손익 둘째자리 숫자의 비정상성
A Study on the Abnormal Patterns of Second Digit Numbers on Earnings Per Share
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초록
본 연구는 벤포드 규칙을 이용하여 주당손익의 둘째자리 숫자의 분포에 어떤 비정상적인 패턴이 나타나는지를 분석한다. 이와 함께 주당손익의 끝자리 숫자의 분포에도 어떤 비정상적인 패턴이 나타나는지를 분석한다. 이러한 비정상성이 주당손익의 첫 자리나 끝자리 숫자를 한 단위 높은 값으로 표시하려는 이익조정과 관련이 있는지를 규명한다. 이 분석에는 유가증권시장과 코스닥시장에 상장된 기업의 최근 13개연도(2004년∼2011년) 분기자료(26,669개 기업-분기)가 사용되었다. 주요 연구결과를 요약하면, 주당손익의 둘째자리에 0의 빈도는 비정상적으로 많고 9의 빈도는 비정상적으로 적은 것으로 나타났다. 특히 주당손익이 흑자이면서 전년 동기 대비 실적이 개선된 경우에 비정상성이 뚜렷하게 나타났으며, 재량적발생액을 이용한 이익조정 검증결과 이러한 비정상성이 이익조정과 관련이 있다는 증거가 확인되었다. 그러나 주당손익의 끝자리나 소수 첫자리에는 어떤 비정상성이 관측되지 않았다.
Abstract
Firms have various forms of motives for earnings management. For example, to smooth income and thereby, create image that a firm is low-risk to investors or creditors (Ronen and Sadan, 1981) or to enhance executive bonuses tied to income (Watts and Zimmerman 1978; Healy, 1985). Furthermore, the earnings are managed to achieve some cognitive reference points in income numbers, i.e. to avoid reporting losses or decreases in earnings (Burgstahler and Dichev, 1997) or to meet analysts’ earnings expectations, thus maintaining a steady growth in share price (Degeorge et al., 1999). In a subset of earnings management of this type, there is a case in which the first digit in earnings numbers is the objectives as a cognitive reference points. Carslaw (1988) finds that firms try to round up a second digit on earnings number to represent a higher first digit on earnings number. If such manipulation occurs, the frequency of occurrence of the second digit in earnings number would not follow expected frequencies. The frequencies in second digit numbers in earnings will have an unusual pattern, like as high frequency in zeros and few frequency in nines. Crucial to this research is specifying an appropriate expected frequency of second digit numbers for earnings. The digital frequencies developed by Benford (1938) are used as an appropriate expected frequency of second digit numbers. This study extends this line of research by applying Carslow's study to second digit numbers on earnings per share(hereafter EPS) of Korean firms. This study investigates whether firms try to manipulate second digit number on EPS to achieve higher first digit number, just like second digit on bottom line numbers of income statement. Additionally, this study investigates whether this type of manipulation of second digit number on EPS is related with earnings management using abnormal accrual. Results show that manipulation of second digit on EPS numbers occur for the first time in this study and that the evidence on firms which report zero on second digit on EPS numbers are related with significantly higher abnormal accrual.
참고문헌 (20)
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