发布时间 : 星期三 文章外文翻译--研发费用资本化和盈余管理：以意大利上市公司为例更新完毕开始阅读
full expensing rule is stated in SFAS No. 86. The exception relates to the capitalization of software development costs FASB, 1985 . At the international level, certain national accounting standards e.g., those of Italy allow flexibility for the capitalization of R&D costs when some conditions are satisfied. These are conditions similar to those required by IAS.
The capitalization of R&D costs has always been a controversial accounting issue. Supporters of capitalization report results suggesting that R&D is a long-lived asset that influences future profitability e.g., Bublitz and Ettredge, 1989, January; Sougiannis, 1994, January; Ballester et al., 2003 . Also, R&D costs are positively related to market value Hirschey and Weygandt, 1985, Spring; Shevlin, 1991, January;?Sougiannis, 1994, January and yield value-relevant information to investors e.g., Aboody and Lev, 1998; Lev and Zarowin, 1999; Healy et al., 2002;?Monahan, 2005 .
Supporters of expensing are fewer. They stress the lack of reliable evidence of future economic benefits e.g., FASB, 1974; Association for Investment Management and Research, 1993;?Kothari et al., 2002 or refer to the benefits of consistency and comparability, pointing out that such benefits trump the costs identified by the supporters of capitalization. Additionally, reliability and the risk of earnings-management policies are underscored by supporters of the most conservative accounting
treatment. In particular, expensing is preferable to capitalization because it increases the objectivity of financial statements. That is, it eliminates the opportunity for managers to capitalize costs of projects that have low probabilities of success or to delay impairment of R&D assets Nelson et al., 2003;?Schilit, 2002 .
The debate surrounding the most effective accounting method for R&D costs supplements other literature that examines the trade-off between relevance i.e., the predictive ability and reliability i.e., the representative faithfulness of accounting information FASB, 1980; AICPA, 1994; IASB, 2004; IASB, 2004 . Thus far, empirical research on R&D costs has focused mainly on the relevance side of the trade-off, while little has been written about the reliability side that is, the possibility that R&D costs are subject to earnings management.
However, a few studies have indeed shown that R&D expenditures are subject to real earnings management. In short, this means that companies cut their R&D investments in order to achieve their earnings goals e.g., Perry and Grinaker, 1994; Bushee, 1998; Mande et al., 2000 . But there is still a paucity of research that explores the motives behind the accounting treatment of R&D costs within a setting where flexibility is allowed. Testing whether companies engage in earnings management through R&D cost accounting can significantly contribute to the debate around the best treatment for such costs. This debate has recently been raised within
the convergence project by US GAAP and IAS/IFRS. Illustrating that R&D cost capitalization is motivated by incentives to manipulate earnings would support the current U.S. GAAP position, which does not allow the capitalization of such costs. On the contrary, showing that companies do not use R&D cost accounting for earnings-management purposes would support the approach now stated by IAS/IFRS, in which capitalization is allowed under certain conditions.
This study contributes to this debate by providing empirical evidence on the motivations for R&D cost capitalization. We hypothesize that the decision to capitalize R&D expenditures is related to two primary motivations: income smoothing and debt contracting. We test our hypotheses using a sample of firms listed on the Milan Stock Exchange. Multivariate results indicate that firms use capitalization of R&D costs to smooth earnings, while there is no support for the debt-covenant hypothesis. These results are robust within a variety of firm characteristics, such as firm size, risk, opportunities for growth, profitability, governance characteristics, industrial membership, and time control.
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 introduces accounting in Italy and the institutional background relating to R&D accounting. Section 3 discusses the previous literature. Section 4 presents the hypotheses and is followed by the research methods in Section 5. Section
6 presents the results and Section 7 concludes the study.
2 R&D accounting in Italy
Italian accounting regulation has always allowed for some flexibility in the capitalization of R&D costs. This allowance is similar to that of IAS. Accounting for intangibles, including R&D costs, is regulated by Principio Contabilen. 24 Accounting Standard No. 24 . This standard distinguishes three different types of R&D costs as follows:
1 “Basic research,” which consists of studies, surveys, and experiments that do not refer to a specific project; this type of R&D cost is normally carried out for the general utility of a company e.g., market research, updating, etc. ;
2 “Applied research,” which consists of studies, surveys, and experiments that refer to specific projects;
3 “Development,” which consists of the application of research results to specific materials, tools, products, and processes preceding production.
The costs for basic research are to be expensed in the income statement. However, costs related to applied R&D can be capitalized if the following conditions are met: a the costs refer to a project for the realization of a clearly defined product or process; b the costs are identifiable and measurable; c the project to which the costs refer is technically feasible; d the company owns the necessary resources to complete and