代理问题、公司治理与盈余稳健性-国立高雄大学.doc

代理問題、公司治理與盈餘穩健性 Agency Problem, Corporate Governance and Accounting Conservatism 高蘭芬 Lanfeng Kao( 陳怡凱 Yi-Kai Chen 陳美蓮 Mei-Lian Chen 國立高雄大學National University of Kaohsiung This version: April 2009 代理問題、公司治理與盈餘穩健性 Agency Problem, Corporate Governance and Accounting Conservatism 摘要 關鍵字：穩健會計、代理問題、公司治理 Abstract This paper investigates the effectiveness of accounting conservatism in mitigating the agency problems among stakeholders. The paper also examines whether the governance role of conservatism could be substituted by other corporate governance mechanisms. The empirical results indicate that conservative accounting reduces moral hazard caused by managers’ limited horizons and liabilities, and agency problems due to free cash flows, deviation between control and cash flow rights, and directors’ shares collateralization. However, conservative accounting cannot mitigate interest conflicts induced by over-compensation of managers. Our results also show that firms tend to use less conservative accounting under stronger corporate governance implying that the governance role of conservatism could be substituted by other governance mechanisms. Key Words: Accounting Conservatism, Agency Problems, Corporate Governance 代理問題、公司治理與盈餘穩健性 Agency Problem, Corporate Governance and Conservatism 研究動機與目的 穩健性係指會計盈餘反映經濟損失之時效性較反映經濟得時效性高，也就是認列經濟損失與利得時存在時效不對稱。如存貨成本與價孰低法之應用，商譽、長期股權投資或固定資產之價值減損測試，以及或有事項之會計處理等都是例子。Basu（1997）認為盈餘穩健性為會計準則對於利得或損失認列的要求不一致，對於好消息之認列標準嚴壞消息之認列標準，進而造成盈餘對於壞消息的反應快於好消息的現象，Basu將此差異定義為不對稱之盈餘時效性且利用此差異衡量穩健性。 過去研究主要以契約論、訴訟論、稅務管制論的觀點說明公司對穩健性的需求（Basu, 1997；Givoly and Hayn, 2000；Shackelford and Shevlin, 2001；Watts, 2003），以契約論最為廣泛。Watts（2003）指出穩健會計乃是為了解決公司契約各方面當人間因資訊不對稱、報酬不對稱（asymmetric payoffs）、有限期間（limited horizons）與有限責任（limited liability）所導致的道德危機（moral hazard），所發展出的一種有效率的契約機制。以債務契約為例，債務契約之限制條款大部分依據或限制於財務報表變數，因此債權人之權益基本上揭露於財務報表，及時認列經濟損失可以更迅速發動債務契約限制條例之債權保全程序，將決策權利及時移轉債權人，以限制經理人從事過度股利發放、舉借新債、增加投資、購併或分割等可能損害債權人權益之行為（Ball and Shivakumar, 2005；Watts, 2003），提高債務契約的效率性，