Fatores determinantes do alisamento de lucros: um estudo empírico na Bovespa (2007)

Abstract

The term Income Smoothing; seem as a mean of avoiding the variation of companies' profits over time; has become a highly discussed subject by the international literature, given the increasing importance of accounting information for the decision making process. On the other hand, our local literature, even though it recognizes the importance of the subject, is still incipient; therefore, this study has the objective of analyzing Earnings Management - represented by Income Smoothing - and possible relevant factors of this practice: structure of ownership and control, level of corporate governance and the origin of the capital. In order to verify the influence of such independent variables on Income Smoothing, it was used a sample of 500 companies with papers negotiated in the Stock exchange of São Paulo Bovespa in the year of 2007. Within this universe of companies, 234 have been removed due to the inexistence of necessary data for the measurement of the Eckel Smoothing Index - representative measurement of Income Smoothing and also from the group left, 12 have still been removed for being considered outliers in the sample. Such data have been extracted from the annual reports communicated by the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários and the Bovespa. After theoretical recital and operational definition of the variables that composes the research, the methodology procedures of the study were applied. During this stage, statistical techniques were utilized, such as simple and multiple models of regression. To verify the veracity of the H1 hypothesis Profits Smoothing practices occur more intensively in companies where there is greater separation between ownership and control , a method called Analisys of Covariance (ANCOVA) was applied and to verify the veracity of the hypotheses H2 The effect of the structure of ownership and control over the smoothing of profits is reduced when the company has a greater level of corporate governance and H3 Companies with a concentrated structure of ownership and control that smooth their profits, will do it more intensively when they have national private controlling shareholder beyond the ANCOVA method, methodologies such as Average Analisys and Simple Regression were also utilized. As a result, it was possible to evidence that even though there is a relation between the variables Income Smoothing and structure of ownership and control, it is the opposite of what the H1 hypothesis assumed, that is, the more concentrated the structure of property of a certain company is, the greater is the incidence of Income Smoothing in its practices; finding that made possible the rejection of the H1 hypothesis. Moreover, it was possible to perceive a positive correlation between the binomial Income Smoothing and structure of ownership and control and the variables level of corporate governance and origin of capital; what made possible the acceptance of both H2 and H3 hypotheses. It was possible through these hypotheses to verify that of the set of companies of the sample, those with low or no level of corporate governance tend to smooth more their profits than those with high levels of governance. It was also possible to observe that from the part of the sample formed by companies that have a concentrated structure of ownership and control and also smooth their profits, those with local origin of capital tend more often to smooth their incomes compared to those with origin of capital composed by foreign capital