김경순 Kyung-soon Kim , 최성환 Sung-hwan Choi
DOI:10.24056/KAR.2025.04.002 KAR Vol.50(No.2) 43-92, 2025
Abstract
This study investigates whether earnings management in the IPO year, which can be implemented to increase the sale value of insider shareholders’ shares after the lock-up period, is differentially determined according to the pre-listing equity participation competition rate (book-building competition rate of institutional investors, subscription competition rate of general investors, subscription rate of employee stock ownership plan). The empirical analysis results are as follows: First, unlike the competition rate of other investors, the book-building competition rate showed a statistically significant negative relationship with accrual-based earning management and a significant positive relationship with real activity-based earnings management. This suggests that for companies with a high book-building competition rate, accrual-based earning management is suppressed due to the institution's monitoring effect, but real activity-based earnings management, which has fewer legal restrictions, may be used as an alternative method. Second, the impact of the book-building competition rate on accrual-based and real activity-based earnings management is mainly observed when the IPO market environment is not institutionally strict. However, no significant relationship is observed in the market environment where the system is relatively strict. These results suggest that non-financial factors can indirectly affect IPO firms’ opportunistic earnings management in a market environment with low institutional strictness, but the indirect effects of nonfinancial factors are replaced by the direct constraints of the system as accounting standards and IPO regulations become more stringent.
Key Words
신규상장, 기회주의적 이익조정, 수요예측, 일반공모청약, 우리사주, IPO, earnings management, book-building, general public offering subscription, ESOP