[雙語翻譯]會計失真外文翻譯--歐洲的權責發(fā)生制異常會計失真的作用（英文）

1、The accrual anomaly in Europe: The role of accounting distortions☆Georgios A. Papanastasopoulos a,?, Emmanuel Tsiritakis ba Department of Business Administration, University of Piraeus, 80 Karaoli Dechow Richardson, Sl

2、oan,Soliman, Xie, 2001) follows that of Sloan (1996)and links the accrual anomaly to the greater subjectivity involved inthe estimation of accruals. Accruals are negatively related with futureearnings performance due to

3、 accounting distortions associated withtheir higher subjectivity. Such distortions could arise from estimationerrors in accruing future benefits and obligations and from the opportu-nistic use of accruals by managers to

4、mislead users of financial state-ments. Investors' misunderstanding of the implications of accountingdistortions, leads to significant overweighting of accruals in pricingstocks. Hence, under a mispricing-based inter

5、pretation, accountingdistortions could possibly have an important role behind theunderperformance of firms with high accruals relative to thosewith low accruals.The abovementioned studies focus on U.S. firms. The study b

6、yPincus, Rajgopal, and Venkatachalam (2007) constitutes the first pub-lished international investigation in the literature showing that the ac-crual anomaly with respect to both future profitability and stockreturns can

7、be generalized to different country settings. In particular,Pincus et al. (2007) document the occurrence of the accrual anomalyin Australia, Canada and the U.K. Further, Pincus et al. (2007) considerin their analysis dis

8、cretionary (abnormal) accruals and find supportiveevidence of a significant role for earnings management in explainingthe occurrence of the accrual anomaly.1Recently, Papanastasopoulos (2014) finds that the accrual effec

9、ton stock returns occurs in 11 European capital markets: Belgium,Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain,Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. He also shows that accrual effect onstock returns in Europ

10、e is influenced by country-level factors that in-clude culture, equity-market setting, financial analysts' research output,shareholder protection, and ownership structure. Yet, he finds factorsthat include accounting

11、 regimes and quality of reported accountingfigures lacking similar influence. However, tests based on measures ofdiscretionary (abnormal) accruals are not considered in the aboveInternational Review of Financial Analysis

12、 41 (2015) 176–185☆ The authors appreciate the helpful comments from the seminar participants at the4th International Conference Meeting of the European Asian Economics, Finance,Econometrics and Accounting Association (A

13、EEFA). The authors thank Gikas Hardouvelisand Dimitrios Thomakos for their insightful comments and suggestions. The usualdisclaimer applies.? Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: papanast@unipi.gr (G.A. Papanastasopoul

14、os), manolis@unipi.gr(E. Tsiritakis).1 Numerous studies link abnormal (discretionary) to earnings management(e.g., Dechow, Ge, it ranges from ?1.6% for Greece to 10.2% for Denmark.Our country-level results concerning th

15、e influence of trust revealthat the implications of distortions arising from accrual accounting onthe accrual–return relation are magnified and become more severein countries with a higher level of generalized trust and

16、a lower levelof secrecy (i.e., an inverse measure of trust representing mistrust).We organize the remainder of the paper as follows. In the next sec-tion we develop our hypotheses. Section 3 describes the data, samplefor

17、mation and variable measurement, Section 4 presents our empiricalresults, and Section 5 provides the concluding remarks.2. Hypothesis developmentIn a path-breaking paper, Sloan (1996) documents the well-knownaccrual anom

18、aly. Accruals are negatively related with future earningsperformance and stock returns. Sloan (1996) claims that the negativerelation between accruals and future profitability arises because ac-cruals are more subjective

19、, while investors do not fully comprehendthat greater subjectivity and make flawed pricing decisions. Such distor-tions could arise from estimation errors in accruing future benefits andobligations and from the opportuni

20、stic use of accruals by managers tomislead users of financial statements.An important implication of Sloan's (1996) explanation is that inves-tors' expectations of future earnings are biased upwards (downwards)fo

21、r firms with high (low) accruals. Consistent with this implicationSloan (1996) shows that firms with high (low) accruals experiencearound future earnings announcements negative (positive) abnormalreturns. In a similar ve

22、in, Bradshaw, Richardson, and Sloan (2001)show that financial analysts' forecasts are relatively optimistic (pessi-mistic) for firms with high (low) accruals.Numerous studies extend Sloan's (1996) work on the acc

23、rual anom-aly. These studies can be divided in two broad categories on the basis ofthe approach that they adopt. The first set of studies, builds on Sloan's(1996) subjectivity conjecture. In particular, Xie (2001) de

24、composes ac-cruals into a normal (nondiscretionary) component and an abnormal(discretionary) component and shows that the accrual anomaly ismostly attributable to the latter component, suggesting that investorsmisunderst

25、and potential earnings management. Similar findings arefound by Chan et al. (2006). Dechow and Dichev (2002) provide evi-dence that firms with low accrual quality have less persistent earnings.Richardson et al. (2005) dr

26、aw a natural link between Sloan's (1996)notion of subjectivity and the well-known concept of reliability.Specifically, they provide a comprehensive definition and categorizationof accounting accruals in which each ac

27、crual category is rated accordingto its reliability and they document that less reliable accruals lead tolower earnings persistence and that investors do not fully anticipatethis lower earnings persistence, leading to si

28、gnificant securitymispricing.The second set of studies adopts the viewpoint that the accrualanomaly applies more broadly to firm growth or correlated econom-ic characteristics with firm growth. Fairfield, Whisenant, and

29、Yohn(2003) show that it is a special case of a more general growth anom-aly, suggesting that it arises from investors' misunderstanding ofdiminishing marginal returns to increased investment. Wu, Zhang,and Zhang (201

30、0) argue that the anomaly arises from optimal in-vestment growth as a rational response by firm executives to a fall-ing discount rate.Richardson et al. (2006) provide a parsimonious algebraic decompo-sition of accruals

31、into a component capturing growth, a componentcapturing accounting distortions and an interaction term betweenthese components. Richardson et al. (2006) argue that this model issuperior to the statistically oriented mode

32、ls (e.g., the Jones, 1991model) used by Xie (2001) and Chan et al. (2006) in the context ofthe accrual anomaly in order to decompose accruals into a discretionaryand a nondiscretionary component; it controls for non-line

33、arities, and itdoes not require the estimation of any parameters since it is an algebraicidentity. Richardson et al. (2006) show that the component capturingaccounting distortions has the primary contributing role in the

34、 negativerelation between accruals and future earnings performance. However,they do not rule the possibility that the growth component could alsoconstitute a supplementary driving force.Pincus et al. (2007) and Papanasta

35、sopoulos (2014) show that the oc-currence of the accrual anomaly is not specific to the U.S. stock market.Pincus et al. (2007) provides evidence that the anomaly occurs inAustralia, Canada and the U.K., while Papanastaso

36、poulos (2014) inBelgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway,Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. Both studies focus on howfundamental formal and informal institutions can affect the occurrenceand

37、 the magnitude of the accrual anomaly at the country level. How-ever, research on what underlying factors drive the negative relationof accruals with future earnings and returns at the firm-level withinthe above-mentione

38、d countries is limited. Pincus et al. (2007) showthat the discretionary accruals measured by Jones (1991) predictreturns in Australia, Canada and the U.K. Recently, Doukakis andPapanastasopoulos (2014) show that accruals

39、 attributable to ac-counting distortions exhibit a negative impact on future profitabilityand stock returns in the U.K. stock market. In the same capital mar-ket, Mouselli et al. (2013) provide evidence that accruals qua

40、lity isuseful in explaining portfolios' returns in the cross-section, butdoes not constitute a priced risk factor.The purpose of this paper is to provide additional insights on wheth-er accounting distortions constit

41、ute an important driving factor behindthe generalization of the accrual anomaly in an international setting.Our focus is on large European capital markets, where gathered evi-dence is most supportive of the existence of

42、the accrual anomaly. Inthe global setting, we can have the presumption that there is a substan-tial cross-country variation in formal and informal institutional factorssuch as capital market setting, regulation, business

43、 practices, accountingstructure, societal norms and culture. These institutions could be linkedwith the contributing role of accounting distortions on the negative re-lation of accruals with future earnings performance a

44、nd stock returns.Thus, whether the contributing role of accounting distortions on the ac-crual anomaly documented in the U.S. stock market, can be generalizedin other European countries is questionable. This leads to the

45、 firsthypothesis (expressed as the alternative) of the study:H1. Accounting distortions have a contributing role on the accrualanomaly in Europe.Given that accounting information is a primary source of informa-tion used

46、in investment decisions, we assess whether social trust consti-tutes an underlying channel (beyond traditional formal institutions) inaffecting investors' understanding of the implications of accountingdistortions an