Does Sarbanes-Oxley Act Affect Earnings Persistence?

沙賓法案對盈餘持續性之影響

10.30142/RAAS.201106.0001

高蘭芬(Lan-Feng Kao)；林共進(Dennis K. J. Lin)；陳安琳(An-Lin Chen)

盈餘持續性 ； 沙賓法案 ； 盈餘管理 ； 盈餘品質 ； 現金流量 ； 應計項目 ； Earnings persistence ； Sarbanes-Oxley Act ； Earnings management ； Earnings quality ； Cash flows ； Accruals

會計審計論叢

1卷1期（2011 / 06 / 01）

1 - 23

英文

在2000與2001年爆發一連串會計醜聞之後，美國政府在2002年七月迅速通過沙賓法案，以期提高管理階層與會計專業對財務報導的責任，並改善公司揭露之正確性與可靠性。本研究探討這些爆發的會計弊案是否與當時上市公司財務報導品質全面下降有關，並探討沙賓法案通過後，財務報導品質是否如主管機關所預期的上升。本研究採用盈餘持續性來衡量財務報導的品質，研究結果顯示，會計盈餘之組成（包括現金流量與應計項目）的持續性在法案通過前的確經歷全面性的下降，而在法案通過後有顯著的改善，因此，即使沙賓法案對企業所帶來高遵循成本引發不少質疑，本研究仍支持主管機關採行較嚴格的揭露要求，以改善公司治理環境及降低會計弊案產生的機會。

The Enron-type scandals lead to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in July 2002. SOX aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosure. In this paper, we investigate whether the scandals are related to the breakdown of the reliability of financial reporting and examine whether the quality of corporate disclosure improves after the passage of SOX. We use earnings persistence to detect whether there is a widespread loss in earnings quality before SOX and a recovery after SOX. We show that the persistence of earnings components (cash flows and accruals) experience widespread loss in the years before the passage of SOX and that the passage of SOX indeed improves the persistence of the earnings components. We recommend that regulations even costly are required to improve corporate governance and to prevent accounting frauds.

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