财务、会计seminar第一百二十五期讲座
演讲题目： The Impact of Financial Covenants in Private Loan Contracts on Classification Shifting
演 讲 者： 于小偶 Assistant Professor
California State University Long Beach
演讲时间： 2016年7月18日（周一）上午10:00—11:30
演讲地点：嘉庚二203室
主 持 人：于李胜 教授
参 加 者：对会计、财务研究有兴趣的师生
讲座介绍：This study examines whether firms with private loan contracts that contain debt covenants based on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) are more likely to misclassify core expenses as special items (i.e., classification shift). Misclassifying core expenses as income-decreasing special items allows the firm to increase EBITDA and thereby potentially avoid debt covenant violations. After controlling for the endogenous choice of including a financial covenant in loan contracts, we show that classification shifting is more likely to occur (1) when loan contracts include at least one EBITDA-related covenant, (2) as the number or proportion of EBITDA-related covenants increases, and (3) when the firm is close to technical violation of at least one EBITDA-related covenant. In contrast, we do not find evidence that non-EBITDA-related financial covenants (i.e., balance sheet covenants) impact expense classification shifting. While prior research on classification shifting primarily focuses on equity market incentives (e.g., meeting analysts’ earnings forecasts), our study extends this research to private loan contracts to highlight that creditors also affect classification shifting.
http://sm.xmu.edu.cn/uploadfile/2016/0715/20160715104836848.pdf
