The Rate Regulation and the Relationship between Stock prices and Earnings

本研究主要针对核电厂所产生的退役成本和废旧核燃料回收成本进行研究。我们考察了哪些激励因素影响了当年这些支出的可自由支配计量，并调查了可自由支配的组成部分是否与价值相关。首先，当年的回收费用是随意确定的，以平滑营业利润的不确定波动，而退役费用不用于收益平滑。如果一些应计项目被随意地分配到不同时期，以达到收益平滑的目的，这些应计项目的酌情增加(即当期收益的储蓄)将把经理对业绩的悲观预测传达给投资者。第二，与上述假设一致的是，可自由支配回收费用与价值相关，且相关系数为负。此外，它与未来一年的营业利润呈负相关。这些证据表明，回收费用的价值相关性与决定因素和未来业绩的预测力是一致的。第三，退役费用和回收费用都不会降低收益质量。我们找不到支持反复批评的证据，即基于管理自由裁量权衡量费用的机会必然会削弱会计信息的有用性。

This research focuses on the decommissioning cost and the recycle cost of used nuclear fuel, which are incurred by nuclear power plant. We examine what incentive factors affect the discretionary measurement of those expenses in the year and investigate whether the discretionary components are value relevant. First, the recycle expenses in the year is discretionally determined in order to smooth the uncertain fluctuations in operating profits, while the decommissioning expenses is not utilized for income smoothing. If some accruals were discretionally allocated inter-period for the purpose of income smoothing, the discretionary increase in those accruals (i.e. savings of earnings in current period) would communicate the manager's pessimistic forecasts on the performance to investors. Second, as consistent with the above hypothesis, the discretionary recycle expenses is value relevant and the coefficient on them is negative. Moreover, it is negatively related to the one-year ahead operating profits. These evidences imply that the value relevance of the recycle expenses is consistently estimated with the determinants and the predictive power of future performance. Third, both the decommissioning expenses and the recycle expenses do not deteriorate the quality of earnings. We cannot find the evidence supporting the repeated criticism that the opportunity to measure expenses based on managerial discretion must diminish the usefulness of accounting information.