earticle

영어

This study tests the association between credit rating and real earnings management. And in this paper, we analyse empirically an influence of credit rating changes (downgrade/upgrade) on real earnings management. Credit rating agencies provide opinions on the creditworthiness of entities and their obligations. Their role is to improve the efficiency of securities markets by increasing the transparency of securities and reducing information asymmetry between investors and issuers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that managers generally describe their capital structure policy in terms of target credit ratings and tend to make a variety of financing, hedging, and investment choices that allow them achieve their desired rating. Therefore, the credit rating is considered as a useful indicator to investors and bondholders. The sample consists of non-banking firms (1,960 Firm-years) with December fiscal year listed in Korea Stock Exchange over 2005~2009. The credit rating information and other firm-specific data are collected from Kis-Value Ⅲ database. The credit rating haves from 1 point to 10 points. 1 point represents firms with the worst credit rank and 10 points represents firms with the best credit rank. Roychowdhury (2006) finds evidence that firms use multiple real earnings management tools in order to meet certain financial reporting benchmarks to avoid reporting annual losses. Therefore, we study Roychowdhury (2006) used a model. We look into the abnormal cash flow from operation (ABCFO), abnormal discretionary expense (ABDE) and abnormal production cost (ABPC) to measure real earnings management. Regression analysis that were included control variables to be found significant result in the most previous works is selected as an earnings management model. The main results of this study can be summarized as follow. First, this paper finds credit rating has a significantly negative influence on the real earnings management in the regression model. Also, credit rating have an significantly positive effects on the abnormal cash flow from operation (ABCFO) and abnormal discretionary expense (ABDE) respectively. This means that better credit rating firms exhibit a lower real earnings management, accepting the hypotheses 1. Second, the credit rating downgrades have a significantly positive influence on the real earnings management. And our results imply that the managers of companies adjust real earnings upward to obtain higher credit ratings. Also, we find that managers have a motivation to obtain higher credit rating because credit ratings affect financing cost and the growth and the profitability of companies. Third, the credit rating upgrades are significantly on the abnormal cash flow from operation (ABCFO) only. These results hold after controlling for foreign ownership, ownership, size, market to book ratio, return on assets and sales growth being influenced by real earnings management. This study also finds significant association between foreign ownership, ownership, size, market to book ratio, return on assets and sales growth and the real earnings management. The findings in this study has various implication. The results of this paper suggest that credit rating gives a good signal in terms of credibility of financial reports and affect real earnings management. Therefore, this findings are very useful and provide a lot of important implications to regulators, investor and creditors that are interested in listed firms. This paper contributes to the literature on the relation between credit rating and real earning management.

한국어

본 연구는 기업의 신용평가등급이 실제이익조정에 미치는 영향을 분석하고, 세부적으로 기업의 신용평가등급 변화(하락/상승)가 실제이익조정에 미치는 영향을 살펴보고자 한다. 가설 검증을 위해 2005년부터 2009년까지 한국거래소에 상장되어 있는 기업을 대상으로 총 5년 동안 기업-연도 1,960개의 표본을 선정하여 연구를 진행하였다. 실제이익조정의 측정은 Roychowdhury(2006)의 연구에서 사용한 실제이익조정 모형을 사용하였으며 실증분석한 연구결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 신용평가등급과 Roychowdhury(2006)의 연구에서 사용한 실제이익조정 측정치와의 관련성에 대해 회귀분석을 시행한 결과, 신용평가등급과 실제이익조정의 통합측정치 REM 간에는 음(-)의 관련성이 있음이 나타났다. 둘째, 전기에 비해 당기에 신용평가등급이 하락한 기업이 신용평가등급 변화가 없는 기업에 비해 당기의 실제이익조정 정도가 높은지 회귀분석한 결과, 하락한 신용평가등급과 실제이익조정의 통합측정치 REM 간에는 양(+)의 관련성이 확인되었다. 셋째, 전기에 비해 당기에 신용평가등급이 상승한 기업이 신용평가등급 변화가 없는 기업에 비해 당기의 실제이익조정 정도가 낮은지 회귀분석한 결과, 상승한 신용평가등급과 실제이익조정의 통합측정치 REM 간에는 유의하지 않은 음(-)의 관련성이 나타났지만, 비정상 영업현금흐름(ABCFO)과는 유의한 양(+)의 관련성이 나타나 가설의 일부가 지지되는 결과로 확인되었다. 본 연구는 기존의 연구들이 기업의 신용평가등급과 이익조정의 관계를 주로 재량적 발생액을 통해 살펴본 데 비해 실제활동을 이용한 측정치를 사용하였다는 점에서 의의를 찾을 수 있다. 또한 기업의 이해관계자 및 투자자나 채권자, 특히 신용평가회사의 합리적인 의사결정에 도움을 줄 수 있을 것으로 기대된다