讲座人：麻志明 助理教授

讲座主题：Segment Earnings Quality and Debt Contracting

摘要：This paper investigates the effect of segment earnings quality on the use of financial covenants in the debt contracts. We argue that segment earnings quality, measured as the degree of earnings transfer among segments, provides incremental information about credit risk compared to the firm earnings quality. We find that banks are less likely to use financial covenants when a multi-segment firm has more severe earnings transfer among segments. This effect is more pronounced for the performance covenants which relies more on earnings, and weaker for firm with stronger external monitoring which attenuates the negative effect of segment earnings transfer. We also find that the effect of segment earnings quality on the financial covenants is significant after controlling for firm-level earnings quality, ruling out the possibility that segment earnings quality is a surrogate for firm-level earnings quality. To alleviate endogeneity, we show that the passage of SFAS 131 results in an exogenous shock that increases earnings transfer in multi-segment firms, and these firms experience a larger reduction in the use of financial covenants after the adoption of SFAS 131 than comparable single-segment firms. Finally, we find that banks compensate the reduction in covenant-based monitoring of higher earnings transfer firms with higher interest spreads, smaller loan sizes, and a higher likelihood of requiring collateral. Our paper is the first to identify the role of segment earnings quality in debt contracting.

讲座时间：2016年6月08日，周三，15:00开始

讲座地点：学院南路校区学术会堂604会议室

讲座人简介：麻志明助理教授现任职于北京大学光华管理学院。麻老师于北京大学取得本科和硕士学位，并于2014年取得香港科技大学会计学博士学位。他的文章发表于国际顶级会计学期刊Journal of Accounting and Economics（JAE）。

本次论坛参加人员范围：会计学院教师、博士生、本硕博连读生以及本科生学术创新实验班成员。

[编辑]：孙颖