Prior earnings management research often focuses on specific accounts or on estimations of discretionary accruals but provides only limited insight into the methods firms actually use to manage earnings. In order to begin exploration of some of the operational details regarding how earnings are...

We investigate whether firms time their decisions to make changes in accounting estimates (CAEs) in consideration of their earnings benchmarks. Using CAE data from 2006-2018, we find that 28.1 percent of income-increasing CAEs are implemented in quarters where pre-CAE earnings are below a...