한미 양국의 잠정적 윤리기업과 회계투명성

This study investigates whether suspect ethics firms improve the accounting transparency in Korea and the United States. To select suspect ethics firms, the discontinuity in cross－sectional distribution of earnings and earnings change Burgstahler and Dichev(1997) found is used. More specifically, the case where a company is in loss intervals adjacent to zero earning in the current year following last year’s profit and a company in earnings decrease intervals adjacent to zero earning change even in consecutive two years’ profit is suggested as a defining test to whether the management is ethical or not in terms of accounting. Based on this reasoning, we set and test the hypothesis that suspect ethics firms are superior to the other ones in accounting transparency which is measured with the absolute value of the discretionary accruals. To test the hypothesis, this study use, samples of Korean and the U.S. listed companies(KOSPI and NYSE) for the period of 2003, one year after SOX act, to 2015. Main finding of this paper is that the U.S. firms were relatively more ethical than Korean ones. Especially concerning the case where a company is in loss intervals adjacent to zero earning in the current year following last year’s profit and is in earnings decrease intervals adjacent to zero earning change even in consecutive two years’ profit, the U.S. firms stand at their earnings positions without falling for the short－term earnings management. This result reflects the ethical restoration of the U.S. capital market after SOX act. Lastly empirical evidences in this study imply that promoting the business ethics can be an effective policy for enhancing the accounting transparency in Korea.