Research On Off-balance Sheet Information Disclosure Of Listed Companies In China

As the economy continues to develop, people gradually realized the limitations of accounting statements. To meet the needs of decision-making, information users have asked enterprises to disclose more off-balance sheet information, rather than being satisfied with limited information in the table under traditional accounting model. From a macro perspective, the efforts to disclosure more off-balance sheet information will help the national macro-economic regulation and the functioning of the market, contribute to the optimal allocation of social resources, as well as help maintain the order of securities market and promote its development. At the micro level, who need information outside the enterprise, it helps to protect the interests of people who are not employees of the company but need information of the enterprise, such as investors and creditors and other persons, from a business perspective; it helps enterprises attract foreign investment and reduce capital costs, thus promoting its development; it helps managers to implement and assess its management responsibility. In conclusion, fair, true, full and timely information disclosure of listed accounting companies is favorable to the country, the enterprise and the public.Although the off-balance sheet information disclosure starts very late in China, domestic regulatory authorities, in order to adapt to the continuous development of Chinese capital market, have made relentless efforts to improve the information disclosure system. They have also established a preliminary all-round multi-level information disclosure framework for listed companies, with the "Securities Act" as the main body, relevant administrative regulations, departmental rules and regulations and other normative documents as the complement. This framework puts forward with scientific and reasonable provisions on aspects from principle norm to operational norm, and from content, form to means of disclosure, which have all integrated with international standards.In particular, the introduction of the38specific guidelines in China’s new accounting standards has played an invaluable role in standardizing and improving the quality of information disclosure. It is a milestone with great historical significance. With the implementation of relevant normative documents, the information disclosure system in China is improving day by day, with more and more off-balance sheet information disclosed. At the same time, we find that despite the progress in China’s off-balance sheet formation disclosure, there are still a lot of theoretical and practicable problems and information user’s need has not been fully satisfied. Therefore, it is of great necessity to analyze and study the off-balance sheet information disclosure of listed companies in China.Based on previous research, this thesis attempts to adopt normative methodology with a lot of materials as assistance to study the theories and practice of off-balance sheet information disclosure of listed companies and come up with some suggestions.The present thesis is divided into the following five parts.Part One introduces the purpose and significance of this study, the status quo of research at home and abroad, research methodologies and the ideas of the research.Part Two starts from concepts related to off-balance sheet information. First of all, it defines the scope of off-balance sheet information of this research, points out the main content of off-balance sheet information and the principle of disclosure. And then it explains the theoretical basis of off-balance sheet information disclosure, with focus on game theory, principal-agent theory and efficient market hypothesis. At last, it elaborates the intrinsic reasons and external demands for disclosing off-balance sheet information of listed companies.The third part starts with normative documents of off-balance sheet information. Based on the influences of new accounting standards on information disclosure, it analyzes the status quo of off-balance sheet information disclosure of China’s listed companies and puts forward some problems.The fourth part analyzes the causes of the problems existing in off-balance sheet information disclosure of listed companies in China on the basis of problems mentioned above.The fifth part presents recommendations for improvement of off-balance sheet information disclosure of listed companies in China.The sixth part ends with a conclusion of the whole study and predictions of later studies.With constant improvement of the off-balance sheet disclosure norms, the quality of China’s off-balance sheet information disclosure will become better and better. Researches on issues related with off-balance sheet information disclosure will be more and more profound, and thus more scientific and complete.