| In order to protect the interests of small and medium shareholders,and improve the return rate of the stock market,the China Securities Regulatory Commission has implemented a series of policies to encourage dividends from listed companies since 2000.For example,in 2006,the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the "Administrative Measures on the Issuance of Securities by Listed Companies",which directly linked the refinancing qualifications of listed companies to the level of dividends.A listed company that requires public offering of securities must satisfy the accumulated profits of cash or stocks in the last three years,not less than 20% of the annual distributable profits realized in the last three years.We call this policy a "semi-mandatory dividend policy".Since the implementation of the semi-mandatory dividend policy,it has aroused widespread concern in the academic and practical circles.On the one hand,the implementation of the semimandatory dividend policy will help raise the dividend level of refinancing enterprises,protect the interests of small and medium investors,and foster long-term investment ideas in the capital market,thereby enhancing the attractiveness of the domestic stock market.On the other hand,the implementation of the semi-mandatory dividend policy has also produced many adverse effects,and there may be “regulatory paradox”.Therefore,the policy effect of the semimandatory dividend policy is not clear,and it is of great practical significance to conduct indepth research on it.This paper investigates how listed Chinese firms may inflate reported earnings in order to reach the threshold by the dividend policy through the way of PSM.The results indicate a high level of the earnings management among firms issuing seasoned equity offering after 2006,the year when the dividend policy was implemented,suggesting that this manipulation is undertaken in response to the dividend policy.We further find that state-owned companies tend to carry out more earnings management than non-state-owned companies in both accrued earnings management and real earnings management.However,non-state-owned companies tend to carry out a lower level of earnings management and are more inclined to choose real earnings management especially by abnormal product costs to manipulate earnings.Based on the results of this study,we propose the following policy recommendations: First,the China Securities Regulatory Commission should consider the earnings management behavior of listed companies when formulating and improving the semi-mandatory dividend policy.When reviewing the refinancing qualifications of listed companies,it should also take into account the possible earnings manipulation behavior of listed companies.Second,further promote the reform of state-owned enterprises,improve the shareholding structure of stateowned enterprises,and achieve "separation of government and enterprises" to reduce the political motives for the management of surplus management of state-owned enterprise managers.Last but not least,further improve the supervision of the capital market,protect the interests of investors,and guide investors to establish the concept of long-term investment.The China Securities Regulatory Commission and other regulatory authorities should continue to guide the development of the capital market on the basis of full argumentation and promote the improvement and progress of the Chinese capital market.The innovation of this paper may be that PSM(prone score matching)method is used to study the relationship between semi-mandatory dividend policy and enterprise earnings management,which not only effectively solves the small sample bias problem in previous research,but also effectively solve endogenous problems.In addition,this paper introduces the adjustment variables of state-owned and non-state-owned holdings in the study of semimandatory dividend policy,and clearly expounds the level of earnings management of different types of enterprises and the methods used in earnings management,which will be relevant research.Supplement and innovation. |
