Abstract:Based on the nature of property right, this paper studies economic consequences of internal control from the perspective of earnings persistence. Selecting the data of listed companies of Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2009 to 2013, we try to find how internal control quality influences earnings persistence and further compare this effect between state owned companies and private companies. At the same time, in order to further explore the influence of internal control improvement for the earnings persistence, we divided the earnings persistence into accruals items and cash flow. The research results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the improvement of internal control quality and earnings persistence. When the internal control quality is raised, earnings persistence will also be improved. Through the comparison of state owned companies and private companies, we find that in the state owned companies the higher the quality of the internal control, the higher the earnings persistence, but when the internal control quality is raised, earnings persistence has not been significantly improved. While in the private companies, the correlation between the quality of internal control and earnings persistence is weaker, but when the internal control quality is raised, earnings persistence increases significantly.