清算企业的盈余管理【外文翻译】.docx

外文文献翻译 原文： Earnings Management Using Discontinued Operations When making firm-valuation decisions, investors place a higher value on items of income expected to be persistent in the future. Presumably to aid users’ valuation decisions, GAAP generally requires that material nonrecurring items be separately disclosed in the financial statements. However, the separation of net income into recurring and nonrecurring components also gives managers the opportunity to mislead investors, by misclassifying income and expense items. For example, a manager wanting to increase firm valuation can misclassify recurring expenses as nonrecurring, misleading investors as to the persistence of the income increase. In the accounting literature, this type of earnings management is called classification shifting. McVay _2006_ discusses two reasons why classification shifting can be a relatively low-cost method for managing earnings. First, unlike accrual management or real activity manipulation, there is no “settling-up” in the future for past earnings management. If a manager decides to increase earnings using income-increasing accruals, then, at some point, these accruals must reverse. The reversal of these accruals reduces future reported earnings. If a manager decides to increase earnings by managing real activities, such as reducing research and development expenditures, then this likely leads to fewer income-producing projects and reduced earnings in the future. In contrast, classification shifting involves simply reporting recurring expenses in a nonrecurring classification on the income statement, having no implications for future earnings. Second,because classification shifting does not change net income, it is potentially subject to less scrutiny by auditors and regulators than forms of earnings management that change net income. Discontinued operations represent the income and cash flows of a portion of a company that has been _or will be_ discontinued from the continuing