【導讀】本文探討了公司的內(nèi)部治理結(jié)構(gòu)對盈余管理的約束作用。這是假設盈余管理系統(tǒng)地涉。員會，內(nèi)部審計職能的變化與外部審計師的選擇四個方面?；跈M截面模型以2020年末?，F(xiàn)董事會及審計委員會的非執(zhí)行董事的人數(shù)越多盈余管理的可能性越低。審計機構(gòu)的選擇與盈余管理沒有顯著的相關性。我們進一步分析還發(fā)現(xiàn)，利用收入的增加。作為盈余管理的替代變量時，盈余管理和審計委員會的存在具有負相關關系。盈余管理產(chǎn)生的影響。在此之前的研究已經(jīng)調(diào)查了治理機制可以減少欺詐性財務報告的產(chǎn)。理職務的分離與盈余管理相關。能導致盈余管理水平下降的因素之中。執(zhí)行董事在董事會的比例有關。進一步測試，使用收入的變化代表盈余管理的變化，表明審計委員會與收益管理措施相關。的非執(zhí)行董事所占的比重。這些文章建議董事會的組成方面的最佳做法是，至少一個非執(zhí)行董事或獨。例的非執(zhí)行董事不太可能違反美國公認會計準則。等預測，董事會的獨立性可能與盈余管理負相關。

　　

【正文】 020)report that external auditors are sceptical of the role that audit mittees play in reducing conflicts between auditors and management. Hence,to effectively discharge their responsibilities,audit mittees need to be active(Collier,1993。Hughes,1999)and to be of sufficient size. Audit mittee activity has been operationalized through the number of mittee meetings held during the financial year,with the expectation that the more often a mittee meets,the more likely it is to carry out its have found that the frequency of audit mittee meetings is negatively associated with both earnings management,as measured by discretionary current accruals(Xie et al.,2020),and the likelihood of enforcement action by the regard to size,several corporate governance reports have proposed that the mittee should consist of at least three members. The existence of an effective audit mittee provides a firm with an added layer of governance,which is expected to constrain earnings management leads to the following hypothesis. H2:Earnings management is negatively associated with the presence of an effective audit mittee. audit function In addition to the audit mittee,firms can voluntarily establish an internal audit function to supplement their existing internal governance established, this function provides firms with an assurance and consulting service,which can improve the effectiveness of their risk management,control,and governance processes(IIA,1999).An internal audit function is also expected to facilitate the operation and effective functioning of the audit mittee,as the goals of the audit function are closely aligned with the financial reporting oversight responsibilities of the audit mittee(Scarbrough et al.,1998。Goodwin and Yeo,2020。Goodwin,2020).The formation of an internal audit function is endorsed by governance reports(NYSE,2020)and prior literature(Collier,1993。Goodwin and Kent,2020)as a means of improving internal governance processes. Although traditionally internal audit has focused more on controls and operational risks,there has been increasing emphasis in the professional literature on the need to also focus on earnings management and inappropriate financial reporting(Eighme and Cashell,2020。Martin et al.,2020。Rezaee,2020。Clikeman,2020。Hala,2020).Sherron Watkins,former Enron vice president,believes that internal auditors should look for warning signs such as undue pressure from senior management to meet earnings targets and pensation arrangements that might encourage employees to manipulate earnings in order to receive financial rewards(Hala,2020).Clikeman (2020)argues that internal auditors should not only be actively involved in detecting earnings management,but that they should take a proactive approach to educating managers and directors about the dangers of the and Cashell(2020) regard the role of internal audit in detecting earnings management as being a plementary one to that of external believe that both should be actively involved in the detection of inappropriate earnings management,thereby providing two unrelated opinions to the audit mittee. These arguments suggest that the presence of an internal audit function should be associated with a lower level of earnings ,the following hypothesis is proposed. H3:Earnings management is negatively associated with the presence of an internal audit function. audit The choice of a firm’s auditor is another internal governance mechanism that is likely to be associated with earnings evidence suggests that the large audit firms are perceived to perform higher quality audits than smaller audit firms(DeAngelo,1981).While examples such as Enron in the USA and HIH in Australia might suggest otherwise,the large firms are considered to be more effective monitors of the financial reporting process pared to smaller (2020)argues that, not only do the large audit firms have more resources and expertise to detect earnings management,but they also have a greater incentive to protect their reputation because of their larger client studies demonstrate that clients of Big 5 auditors report lower levels of earnings management than clients of nonBig 5 auditors(Becker et al.,1998。Francis et al.,1999) [6] . Therefore,we expect that firms that choose a Big 5 auditor are less likely to engage in earnings gives rise to the following hypothesis: H4:Earnings management is negatively associated with the use of a Big 5 auditor. 3 Research design The present study involves a crosssectional analysis of 434 firms listed on the ASX for the financial year ending in test our hypotheses,we use two primary models which regress absolute discretionary accruals on a set of governance and control two models differ only in their measure of audit mittee also conduct additional tests,using alternative measures of both the dependent variable and a number of independent variables. selection Our preliminary sample of 568 firms prised panies for which annual reports were available either on the Connect database,on pany websites or in hard information and information pertaining to boards of directors and audit mittee characteristics were obtained from disclosures made in annua ,annual report disclosure concerning the use of internal audit is not ,this information was obtained by one of three methods. The first method involved consulting the University of Queensland/KPMG Centre for Business Forensics database. The second method involved examining annual report final method involved directly contacting firms,which were either not included on the database or whose annual reports made no mention of an internal audit function. To arrive at the final sample,exclusions were made on the basis of industry classification and insufficient governance or financial the purpose of industry classification,the Global Industry