The Effects of Compensation for Deficits and Governance of Public Institutions on Earnings Management

Public institutions often substitute for the role of governments by performing tasks such as the production of public goods and the management of funds. Public institutions are categorized into public corporations, non-classified public institutions, and quasi- governmental institutions according to asset size and gross revenue(ratio). These institutions are subdivided into fund-management based quasi-governmental institutions, which operate and manage governmental funds, and commissioned-service based quasi -governmental institutions, which perform government functions on consignment. For most deficits, the unique compensational procedures of the government are applied to fund-management-based quasi-governmental institutions. In terms of methods of compensation for deficits, the government stands surety for the payments indirectly, allowing quasi-governmental organizations to issue bonds, or the government provides the quasi -governmental institutions with financial subsidies directly. The government guarantees payment of the bonds of public institutions that are subject to deficit-compensation plans. For this reason, interest on bonds issued by public institutions is set at a lower rate than that for bonds issued by other public organizations. The purpose of this proposed study is to examine the effects of compensation for deficits and governance of public institutions on managers’ earnings management. This study highlights problems in the current compensation scheme for deficits and draft possible solutions. Accordingly, this study examines whether public organizations that are affected by loss-coverage systems have a relatively lower probability of avoiding losses than other public institutions. In addition, this study examines the manner in which the governance of public organizations affects earnings management to avoid losses. This study obtained the data on 287 public institutions’ 2006-2010 financial information from the Public Institution ALIO System and executed logistic regression on the earnings distributions of Burgstahler and Dichev(1997) as interest variables such as loss-coverage institutions dummy and ratio of external directors. Our findings are as follows. First, the public institutions that are exempt from the loss-coverage system are more likely to manage positive earnings when losses are expected. Second, public institutions with a high ratio of outside(non-standing) directors on the board are generally less likely to be involved in opportunistic earnings management. Third, governance effectively reduces institution managers’ behaviors of loss-avoidance earnings management. This study analyzed the side effects of the government’s loss- coverage system for public institutions and contributed to building sound governance as a solution.