A Study on the Impact of Foreign Investors on Discretionary Accruals - Using Investment Horizons of Foreign Investors－

We investigate the role that foreign investors play in restraining earnings management activities of firms. For this study, we use two variables, equity ratio and investment horizons of foreign investors. as the proxies of foreign investors. Especially, we focus on investment horizons of foreign investors as the proxy of impact of foreign investors on earnings management. The investment horizons of foreign investors is measured as the investor turnover is suggested by Gaspar et al.(2005) and Kim and Jang(2012). And earnings management, discretionary accruals is measured by the modified Jones model(Dechow et al., 1995). We find that the discretionary accruals is less prevalent when Long－term foreign investors are among shareholders. Our study shows that if investment horizons of foreign investors is short, equity ratio of foreign investors would be not influence to facilitate mitigation of managers’ use of earnings management. Especially, if investment horizons of foreign investors is short and equity ratio of foreign investors is high, it could be facilitate acceleration of managers’ use of earnings management. This means that it can be more important to consider for investment horizons of foreign investors than equity ratio of foreign investors on testing the impact of foreign investors on the earnings management by this paper. And the investment horizons of foreign investors can be better proxy of foreign investors than equity ratio of foreign investors.