Imperfect Accounting and Reporting Bias
研究发现企业故意错报的倾向与行业内无意错报的普遍性呈倒U型关系，因为错误既降低会计信息价值相关性（抑制偏差），又提供伪装（助长偏差），这对理解报告激励和会计准则制定有启示。
ABSTRACT Errors and bias are both inherent features of accounting. In theory, while errors discourage bias by lowering the value relevance of accounting, they can also facilitate bias by providing camouflage. Consistent with theory, we find a hump‐shaped relation between a firm's propensity to engage in intentional misstatement and the prevalence of unintentional misstatements in the firm's industry for the whole economy and a majority of the industries. The result is robust to using firms’ number of items in financial statements and exposure to complex accounting rules as alternative proxies for errors and to using the restatement amount in net income to quantify the magnitude of bias and errors. To directly test for the two effects of errors, we show that when errors are more prevalent, the market reacts less to firms’ earnings surprises and bias is more difficult to detect. Our results highlight the imperfectness of accounting, advance understanding of firms’ reporting incentives, and shed light on accounting standard setting.