| Since January 1,2007, China has begun to enforce the new Accounting Standards within the scope of listed companies. The formulation of these standards has basically realized substantial convergence with IFRS, but the construction of enforcement mechanism of accounting standards has not kept up with the pace of accounting criteria reform, there are some disconnections between them. There already have been some achievements about enforcement of accounting standards abroad, the extracted influencing factors not only include the formulation of standards themselves, internal factors such as company characteristics and corporate governance, but also include external factors such as institutional environment. This thesis will mainly discuss the effect of institutional environment of different areas on enforcement of accounting standards there. Finally I hope to find out key institutional factors and to provide some enlightenment for the future implementation of accounting standards.This thesis uses the method of empirical research, as for institutional environment, we select regional degree of marketization (Market), legal protection (Law), government intervention (GovInter) and social capital (SocCapital) as the explanatory variables studied. And we substitute earnings quality and financial disclosure quality, which are typical representatives of accounting information quality, for effectiveness of enforcing accounting standards, because enterprises' implementation of accounting standards has more directly reflected in the corresponding financial behaviors they adopt and in the quality of accounting information they provide. With respect to the measurements of accounting information quality, this thesis takes different approaches with different research samples.Firstly, this thesis selects 4116 A-share mixed samples from 2007 to 2009 in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and it uses the extent of earnings management to measure the earnings quality. Dependent variable |DA| (the absolute value of discretionary accruals) is computed by cross-section Modified Jones Model (1995) based on each industry and each year. And then through multiple linear regression analysis, there comes the conclusion:the higher regional degree of marketization, better legal protection, less government intervention and higher social capital level will bring lower |DA|, and this indicates the higher earnings quality. Secondly, this thesis selects 2188 A-share samples from 2007 to 2009 in Shenzhen Stock Exchange. It uses the information disclosure appraisals provided by Shenzhen Stock Exchange as dependent variable, and examines the effect of institutional environment factors on it. Through binary logistic regression analysis, it also proves the four assumptions this thesis has put forward. Finally, this paper takes the "Information Disclosure Index of Chinese Listed Companies" as an alternative dependent variable, which is provided by the research group of Beijing Normal University. It selects 1548 A-share cross-section samples of 2009 in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange. By group comparison and multiple linear regression analysis, it comes to roughly the same conclusion as above, which has guaranteed the robustness of the empirical results to some extent.With regard to the research characteristics, this thesis takes different regions in one country as research scope, and this can objectively present a similar background of "international research" framework. So it overcomes some problems of multinational study in a certain degree, such as lack of comparability between institutional factors, differences of financial indicators'calculating methods, etc. This thesis uses accounting information quality to measure the effectiveness of enforcing accounting standards, it not only adopts earning management and information disclosure appraisals provided by Shenzhen Stock Exchange, but also innovatively introduces "Information Disclosure Index of Chinese Listed Companies" provided by Beijing Normal University, and this has guaranteed the robustness of the conclusions to some extent. Furthermore, this thesis has made a little exploration on the study of relationships between institutional environment and enforcement of accounting standards, and it connects institutional factors such as law, market, government intervention and social credit, with earnings management, information disclosure, and so on. This has put forward higher incentives and requirements for future construction of regional institutional environment, and it is in favor of actively promoting provincial market economic reforms, speeding up the process of marketization, improving investor protection system, cultivating social capital, correctly handling the relationship between enterprises and government, etc.The defects of this thesis mainly lie in:the choice of explanatory variables is too limited, and they just come from marketization indexes provided by Fan Gang et al. and provincial credit conditions provided by Zhang Weiying et al., especially, the social capital variable relatively lags behind. Actually, there can be more and more alternative variables of institutional environment factors, and I really look forward to seeing more research findings about this topic. In addition, as for the measurement of effectiveness of enforcing accounting standards, this paper only selects earnings management and information disclosure rating (index), which may not be quite comprehensive. Besides, some problems, such as how to further design the implementation mechanism of accounting standards, are also not involved in this thesis. All of these can become the research directions in the future. |
