دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تأثیر مالکیت هرم بر مدیریت درآمد - امرالد 2018

Abstract

Purpose: Unlike firms listed in the United States, many large firms in Canada belong to business groups organized as pyramids. A pyramidal structure refers to a business group that consists of a set of enterprises or other entities and displays a top-down chain of control. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between pyramid ownership and earnings management. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is an empirical study using a sample of 165 Canadian listed firms from 2010 to 2015. The impact of pyramid ownership on both accrualbased and real earnings management is examined. Findings: The findings show that pyramid-affiliated firms engage in less accrual-based and real earnings management than non-pyramid-affiliated firms. The results further show that the divergence between control rights and cash flow rights of the controlling shareholders in the pyramid-affiliated firms is positively related to real earnings management. Moreover, the results highlight that intra-group transactions (other than internal financing) among pyramid-affiliated firms lead to higher level of both accrual-based and real earnings management, but internal financing is negatively associated with real earnings management. Overall, this study provides evidence which indicates that pyramid ownership structure and earnings management are related to each other. Originality/value: The paper contributes to the earnings management literature by studying the impact of pyramid ownership structure on earnings management, especially real earnings management.

6. Conclusion and summary

This paper contributes to the earnings management literature by examining the relationship between pyramid ownership and earnings management. Relying on measures of both accrual-based and real earnings management, we find that pyramid-affiliated firms engage in less accrual-based and real earnings management than non-pyramid-affiliated firms. We further find that the divergence between control rights and cash flow rights of the controlling shareholders in pyramid-affiliated firms is positively related to real earnings management. In addition, the results highlight that intra-group transactions (other than internal financing) among pyramid-affiliated firms lead to a higher level of both accrual-based and real earnings management, but internal financing is negatively associated with real earnings management. Overall, the findings provide evidence that there are important relationships between a pyramid ownership structure and earnings management.

These findings are subject to a limitation - the inferences apply only to listed firms in Canada, and caution should be exercised in generalizing the findings in this study to other countries. In spite of the limitation, this study has some implications for policy makers, corporate managers, and academics. Findings in this study show that, in Canada, firms in pyramidal group manage less earnings than other firms, which implies that a pyramid structure creates greater monitoring of managers by controlling shareholders. This is in contrast to the results found in some Asian and European countries, which show that large shareholders expropriate benefits from minority shareholders by reporting low quality of earnings (Fan and Wong 2002; Garcia Lara et al. 2005; Bae and Jeong 2007). Future research might explore explanations for why the relationships between large shareholders and earnings management are inconsistent across countries; for example, whether the inconsistent results are linked to the specific legal and institutional environment in each country. A broader understanding of the relationship between the pyramidal structure and earnings management can be pursued by extending this study to include firms in other countries, where pyramid groups are prevalent but legal and institutional environments differ from those in the Canadian context.