자산손상차손 인식기업의 이익지속성과 자본시장의 반응: 재량적 자산손상차손 인식을 중심으로

Prior capital market accounting studies reporting accrual anomaly explain that partial market participants afford to get abnormal return as capital market does not rationally evaluate the information toward current earning components containing future earning information(Bernard and Thomas 1990; Sloan 1996; Xie 2001). Especially, Sloan(1996) reports that the persistence of total accruals for future earnings is lower than that of cash flows, and he suggest that the overpricing of total accruals due largely to discretional accruals(Sloan 1996, Xie 2001). Also, Richardson et al.(2005) suggested that less reliable accruals lead to lower earnings persistence and investors do not rationally reflect lower earnings persistence, leading to significant stock mispricing. So, accrual anomaly is occurred on account of the less reliable accruals information that being provided to market participants. Until now capital market pricing studies have focused on operating accruals, but Dechow and Ge(2006) argue that high accruals are likely to be the outcome of rules with an income statement perspective, while low accruals are likely to be the outcome of rules with a balance sheet perspective, and that this has implications for the properties of earnings. The low persistence of earnings in low accrual firms is primarily driven by special items. They then show that low accrual firms of possessing special item have higher future stock returns than other low accrual firms. This is consistent with investors misunderstanding the transitory nature of special items. Similarly, Kang and Choi(2009) insist on that operating accruals not only cause low earning persistence and capital market pricing, but also non-operating accruals cause low earning persistence and capital market pricing. This paper investigates the persistence and market pricing of the firms recognized asset impairments using the asset impairment among special items that has been criticized for being used as a means to discretional earnings management of managers owing to accounting regulation’s imperfections of asset impairments. To sum up prior studies, the low persistence of discretional accruals can is caused through special items into discretional accruals and the special items of having less reliability act as a main component of accrual anomaly. The results are as follows. First, the persistence of the firms recognized asset impairments is lower than that of the firms unrecognized asset impairments. Also, the persistence of discretional asset impairments is lower than that of non-discretional asset impairments. Second, using Mishkin(1983) test, the market pricing results indicate that capital market does not more rationally evaluate the persistence of earnings components of the firms recognized asset impairments than that of the firms unrecognized asset impairments. Also, capital market does not more rationally evaluate the persistence of discretional asset impairments than that of non-discretional asset impairments. Third, We separated samples as pre-impairment profit firms during the next year and pre-impairment loss firms during the next year. The results on analyzing separated samples were significantly indicated in almost profit firms during the next year. Fourth, we additionally robust tested discretional asset impairments variable about Heckman 2 stage estimate using methodology of Bushway et al.(2007) and Lennox et al.(2012). That results same about main analysis. This paper has limitation such as the omitted variable problem, the measurement error as regards the measurement process of discretional asset impairments but has differentiation as compared with prior studies which we separate discretional asset impairments from economic factors and real Firm performance factors. Also, based on that the asset impairment among special items has accounting regulation’s imperfections, this paper contribute to prior studies on investigating the persistence and market pricing of the firms recognized asset impairments.