수익비용대응 수준과 재무분석가 수의 관계

This study analyzes the association between matching of revenues with expense and the number of analyst following. Matching of revenues with expenses is a major accounting convention in the traditional accruals-based accounting system. It is to match incurrence of expense in accordance with the recognition of revenue as the sacrificed resources contribute to the realization of the revenue. This increases the timeliness of the accounting earnings, enhances the quality of earnings, and improves information usefulness(Dechow 1994; Su 2005; Tucker and Zarowin 2006). However, with the advent of new financial accounting systems focused on fair value of assets and liabilities, and the gradual degeneration of traditional accounting principles, the matching principle has been historically weakened and it resulted in poor quality of earnings and higher uncertainty in accounting information(Dichev and Tang 2008; Paek 2011a, 2011b; Noh 2011). Under these circumstances, we expected that if the level of matching between revenues and expenses was associated with the quality of earnings and usefulness of accounting information, it would also have a relationship with the number of analyst following to produce additional analytical information using the accounting information. In addition, we considered that the components of expenses would further affect relationship between the matching level of revenues with expenses and the number of analyst following because the level of information uncertainty would grow larger when the components of expenses indirectly matched to revenues, like selling and administrative expenses. From the empirical results, we found that the number of analyst following increased with poor matching between revenues and expenses in accounting information. In addition to this, it even increased higher when the weight on selling and administrative expenses out of total expenses was larger. These results were also consistently proved from additional robustness analyses concerning the characteristics of the expenses, with the application of time-series analysis to the matching variables, and with samples excluding firms without any analyst forecast values respectively. Such results support the idea of prior researches that poor matching of revenues with expenses increases the uncertainty and weakens the usefulness in accounting information(Dichev and Tang 2008; Paek 2011b; Noh 2011). The results become new evidence that poor matching revenue with expense provides analysts larger incentives to produce additional information. Further, these prove the different components of expenses create differential level of uncertainty in accounting information and cause larger positive impact on the number of analyst following. The results make it possible to anticipate the impact of fair value accounting recently introduced along the application of international accounting standards(K-IFRS). Since K-IFRS gives a stress on the value-oriented approach in accounting information, introduction to K-IFRS will result in poorer matching of revenues with expenses, compared to historical cost-based accounting. Some prior researches considered this as a critical problem because it could lose reliability of accounting informations(Paek 2011b). In this respect, this study provides an empirical evidence on the existence of such problem and supports the idea in the previous researches to carefully compare and analyze the usefulness of accounting information in both accounting systems regarding information users.