State Ownership and Earnings Management around Initial Public Offerings: Evidence from China

Abstract

This study investigates earnings management by firms around their initial public offerings (IPOs) in domestic Chinese equity markets. Using a sample of 437 IPO firms, we find that Chinese firms tend to inflate earnings around their IPOs. We also show that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) manage earnings to a lesser degree than non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs) do around IPOs. Furthermore, using path analysis, we find that two incentive factors, CEO shareholding and accessibility to bank loans, explain 48% of the correlation between state ownership and earnings management for IPO firms. In particular, accessibility to bank loans is a more important incentive factor that leads to less earnings management for SOEs than NSOEs.

Keywords: IPO, Earnings management, Ownership type