잠정이익 공시 이익의 체계적·비체계적 편의에 관한 연구 :중단영업손익을 이용한 분석을 중심으로

This study examines systematic and firm-specific preliminary earnings biases by expanding previous studies on earnings management using discontinued operations to preliminary earnings disclosure. Timeliness and incompleteness characteristics of Korean preliminary earnings disclosure rules can cause earnings bias. We expect that timeliness of preliminary earnings disclosure would cause systematic bias in preliminary earnings while incompleteness of preliminary earnings disclosure rule would provide managers with discretion on recognizing discontinued operations income in the way that earnings managed upwards. We find evidences that managers poorly discern discontinued operations from continued operations as of preliminary earnings disclosure day, which leads operating income to be systematically over/less recognized. However, managers whose firm achieved benchmarking earnings classify discontinued operations income(loss) more(less) into operating income to report favorable earnings numbers. Further, we find evidence that preliminary net incomes are biased upwards by manager’s omitting discontinued operations loss. This behavior was found stronger in companies that achieved benchmarking earnings. Additional tests using sub-sample(Timely vs Delayed and Big4 vs Non-big), confirms that our prediction and hypothesis test results are robust. Our test results provide additional understanding of preliminary earnings to academics, external auditors, stock investors and imply that Korean preliminary earnings disclosure rules should be supplemented.