The relation between banking deregulation and accounting conservatism

本研究以美國證券市場為樣本，探討銀行業之法規開放是否對非金融業公司之會計穩健性造成影響。銀行法規開放可使銀行透過併購於州內擴張，借款公司可能面對之銀行議價能力上升，使得銀行要求融資顧客出具高品質之財務報表。另一方面，州際銀行法規開放可能使他州銀行進入本地金融市場，進而提高金融市場之競爭度。由於會計穩健性可降低管理階層與投資人的資訊不對稱，被視為高品質的財務報表，本文推測銀行業法規鬆綁會影響公司會計穩健性。實證結果顯示，州內銀行法規開放與會計穩健性間具有顯著正向關係；然而，州際銀行法規開放與會計穩健性間具有顯著負向關係。額外分析顯示，大型企業更傾向於對銀行法規開放作出反應，而較依賴發行公司債融資方式之公司在面對銀行法規開放時則減少財務報導中認列損失之即時性。This study uses US banking deregulation as a research setting to examine whether banking deregulation has an impact on the degree of accounting conservatism of non-financial firms. Since banking deregulation would enable large banks expand within states through merge and acquisition, bank’s bargaining power to lenders may increase. Banks may require their clients to provide higher quality of financial statements. On the other hand, banking deregulation may increase competition in local financial markets by enabling large banks to enter into local markets. As accounting conservatism could alleviate information asymmetry between management and investors, and serves as an indicator of high quality of financial statements, I expect that banking deregulations would have an impact on firms’ reporting conservatism. I find that there is a significantly positive relationship between intrastate banking deregulation and firms’ timely loss recognition. In contrast, interstate banking deregulation has a significantly negative influence on firms’ timely loss recognition. Additional analyses reveal that large firms are more likely to respond to the banking deregulation and that firms that rely more on public debt financing respond to the banking deregulation by decreasing their degree of timely loss recognition in financial reporting