现行企业会计准则下盈余管理分析研究外文翻译.doc

杭 州 商 学 院 财 务 与 会 计 系 本 科 毕 业 论 文 PAGE Ⅲ 外文翻译之一 A Review of the Earnings Management Literature and Its Implications for Standard Setting Author： Paul M. Healy and James M. Wahlen Nationality：America Derivation: Accounting Horizons Vol.13 No.4 365-383 INTRODUCTION In this paper we review the academic evidence on earnings management. The primary purpose of this review is to summarize the implications of scholarly evidence on earnings management to help accounting standard setters and regulators assess the pervasiveness of earnings management and the overall integrity of financial reporting. This review is also aimed at identifying fruitful areas for future academic research on earnings management. Standard setters define the accounting language that management uses to communicate with the firm’s external stakeholders.1 By creating a framework that independent auditors and the SEC can enforce, accounting standards can provide a relatively low-cost and credible means for corporate managers to report information on their firms’performance to external capital providers and other stakeholders.2 Ideally, financial reporting therefore helps the best-performing firms in the economy to distinguish themselves from poor performers and facilitates efficient resource allocation and stewardship decisions by stakeholders. If financial reports are to convey managers’ information on their firms’ performance, standards must permit managers to exercise judgment in financial reporting. Managers can then use their knowledge about the business and its opportunities to select reporting methods, estimates, and disclosures that match the firms’ business economics, potentially increasing the value of accounting as a form of communication. However, because auditing is imperfect, management’s use of judgment also creates opportunities for “earnings management,” in which managers choose reporting methods and estimates that do not accurately reflect their firms’ underlying economic