The Effect of Institutional Factors on Discontinuities in Earnings Distribution
研究了日本企业盈利分布在零点处出现不连续的原因，发现税收与会计的紧密关联以及企业与银行的关系导致企业通过盈余管理避免亏损，且私营企业比上市公司更明显。
Previous studies have shown that, compared with earnings distributions in other countries, there are clear discontinuities at zero in the distribution of earnings levels in Japanese firms. We predict that two unique institutional factors in Japan—(a) the alignment between financial and tax accounting and (b) the tight relationship between firms and their banks—cause the discontinuities in earnings distribution. Consistent with this prediction, we find that firms with high marginal tax rates and tight relationships with their banks are more likely to manage earnings to report slightly positive earnings. We also find that this relationship is more pervasive for private firms than public firms. We contribute to the literature by examining a significant research setting that has features of both institutional factors and loss-avoidance behaviors to enable deeper consideration during hypothesis development.