수익비용대응과 회계정보에 대한 시장반응

The matching principle refers to the accounting process that the expenses should be recognized in the accounting period when the revenues are recognized. The matching principle has played a key role in accrual-based accounting for a long time in that the performance of a firm is measured by matching revenues to expenses that is used to get the revenues. However, since 1970s, the importance of matching principle has faded away as Financial Accounting Standard Board(FASB) changed the base of accounting process from Income Statement to Statement of Financial Position. In addition, International Financial Reporting Standards(IFRS) is getting a primary accounting standard in many countries. South Korea also adopted IFRS as its accounting standard recently and established Korea-adopted IFRS(K-IFRS). K-IFRS does not contain detailed accounting information in financial statements as it is principle- based accounting. As a result, matching principle is gradually losing its role in accounting process. In the circumstances of decrease in the importance of matching principle, this paper is to re-examine the importance of matching principle. Considering the change in the accounting reporting environment that is heading toward principle-based accounting driven by K-IFRS and ignoring the role of matching principle, the investigation on the relationship between matching level and usefulness of accounting information becomes a compelling topic. To put it concretely, this paper investigates how the matching level between revenues and expenses influences market reactions to accounting information as well as usefulness of accounting information. That is to say, this paper aims at verifying how the market reactions to revenues and expenses vary depending on matching levels. As the measure of matching level, adjusted R2 obtained from regressing current revenues on current expenses is used. The regression to get adjusted R2 is the modified version of Dichev and Tang(2008)'s model. Market reactions are measured as the coefficients in the regression of stock returns on surprises of revenues, expenses and earnings. Revenue surprises are calculated as actual revenues less analysts forecasts of revenues. Expenses and earnings surprises are calculated in the same way. As a result of analyzing the companies listed on Korean Securities Market from 1991 to 2009, the differential market reactions to revenues and expenses appear to be significantly large in the poor matching firms, while no significant difference is found in the good matching firms. The result implies that the matching level can be a cause of the differential market reactions between revenues and expenses. In addition, the result can be interpreted such that relatively more noise is included in the accounting information when matching level is low. This paper also examines the difference of the informativeness of accounting earnings between the good matching firms and the poor matching firms. The results show that the informativeness of accounting earnings is higher for the good matching firms relative to the poor matching firms. This result implies that the matching level can be the measurement of the earnings quality. It means that market participants consider the accounting earnings of the good matching firms more useful in their decision makings. Compared to prior studies, this paper has two distinctive implications as follows. First, prior studies have showed that investors value higher a dollar of revenue surprises than a dollar of expense surprises(Ertimur et al., 2003), but prior studies didn't provide the reason why investors react more to revenue surprises than expense surprises. Focused on this point, this paper suggests that the matching level could be the reason of the differential market reactions between revenue and expense surprises. Second, previous studies showed that the mismatching between revenues and expenses decreases earnings persistence and increases earnings volatility in a time series framework(Dichev and Tang., 2008; Beak, 2011a). This paper analyzes directly whether investors evaluate the accounting earnings depending on the matching levels. According to the results of this paper, we make a suggestion that reporting guidelines with respect to matching revenues and expenses should be provided for higher usefulness of accounting information, particularly under the circumstances that principle-based accounting standards are applied under K-IFRS.