earticle

영어

There have been many changes since China introduced the capitalist market economy, and the ownership structure of companies has changed significantly, but there are still a number of unique systems that are applied only to Chinese companies due to their cultural, environmental, and legal specificity. Unlike companies under the capitalist market economy, Chinese companies have quite different levels of marketization in 31 provinces (Wang et al., 2021). Therefore, it is important to identify the impact of regional marketization level differences in China while explaining the impact on the earnings management behavior of Chinese companies. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence the choice of two types of earnings management, namely accrual earnings management (AM) and real earnings management (RM), for Chinese companies. Since the effects of AM and RM on companies are different, it is a meaningful topic to investigate the use of the two earnings management in Chinese companies. First, we examined whether Chinese companies are generally using AM and RM complementarily or substitutionary as a means of earnings management. Second, it was examined how differences in the level of marketization by province affect the two earnings management behaviors. The result of analyzing 14,796 (firm-years) data listed on the Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchanges in China for nine years from 2011 is as following. First, although the level of marketization in China has improved a lot, there are still differences in the level of marketization by region. Second, it was found that the overall earnings management behavior of listed Chinese companies was complementarily using AM and RM. Third, there was a difference in the earnings management behavior of Chinese listed companies according to the level of marketization by province, and it was confirmed that in regions with a high level of marketization, there is a tendency to move from AM which is relatively easy to detect to RM. These results indicate that although Chinese companies have recently undergone accounting system reforms, including split share structure reform (SSSREF), they still use AM, which is relatively easy to detect, and because the differences in marketization levels by region due to unnecessary government interventions, low administrative transparency, financial support systems applied to Chinese companies can also affect accounting practices in China, the results of this study are meaningful in suggesting that there is a need to raise the level of marketization to the companies in low-marketized provinces.