This study discovers the relation between corporate governance factors and earnings quality and finds that increases in dividends and foreign ownership deter earnings management. The author shows that dividend increases and foreign ownership enhance earnings quality, but they appear to be...

The present study investigates the relationship between management characteristics (managerial entrenchment, CEO narcissism, overconfidence, board effort, real and accrual-based earnings management) and the audit report readability of listed firms. In other words, this paper seeks to answer the...

The present study aims to investigate the effects of mandatory requirements of audit firm rotation on earnings management among companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The study population consists of 1030 observations and 103 companies listed on the TSE during the years 2003-2012;...

Purpose: This study verifies the debt covenant hypothesis by exploring the earnings management of zero-leverage firms that are not constrained by debt covenants. Furthermore, this study investigates whether the earnings management of zero-leverage firms varies depending on financial constraints,...

This paper examined the association between various measures of earnings quality and stock return volatility of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)-listed companies for 10 years from 2009 to 2018. The measures of earnings quality considered were accrual quality, conservatism, earnings persistence,...

The phenomenon of creative accounting has attracted the attention of researchers for decades, especially in the financial sector for its implications on the quality of financial reporting. Although several procedures have been developed by researchers and practitioners to determine any...

This paper investigates the relationship between bank debt and earnings management in private SMEs in a bank-oriented economy. In this study, we leverage a sample of 4866 Italian private SMEs from 2005 to 2012 and propose a new metric to isolate the annual increase in bank debt. The results of...

Financial managers intentionally use the legal manipulation of earnings to the business development. Earnings management is a widespread business finance phenomenon. The approaches and the ways of this practice are marked by many parallels. The main target of the article is to show the clusters...

We exploit a recent Swedish tax reform, implying higher marginal tax rates for the top 5% of the earnings distribution, to learn about earnings responses in an economy where taxes already are high. Using a simple and graphical cross sectional method, we estimate earnings elasticities in the...

This study provides empirical proof that the positive impact of high accrual quality is the ability to accurately predict the future return with a positive sign. In the capital market, better prospects are commonly indicated by regularly and routinely implementing a high-yield dividend policy....

In this study, we investigate whether effective corporate governance (CG) intervenes in the relationship between real earnings management (REM) and firm value (FV) by introducing Korean market data. We find that management's opportunistic REM behavior is no longer effective for firms...

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...

This paper finds its motivation in the lack of robust results in the literature that analyse the effect on unconditional conservatism of the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by the Spanish listed companies. We provide new evidence by using, for the first...

The paper examines the impact of IFRS adoption on the use of loan loss provisions (LLPs) to manage earnings and capital by listed deposit money banks in Nigeria. The study employed an ex-post facto research design and a sample of fourteen (14) Deposit Money Banks listed on the Nigerian Stock...

This paper examines the asset write-off behavior of loss firms in response to tax rule changes. In particular, we investigate two simultaneous changes in tax loss carryforward offsetting in opposite directions in Germany and France. Understanding if and how tax losses affect firms’ financial...

This paper documents earnings dynamics over the life-cycle and income level using a large administrative database from German tax records. I find that labor earnings display important deviations from the typical assumptions of linearity and normality. For the bottom earners, large income changes...

This paper investigates whether the degree of tax aggressiveness is a determinant of accounting conservatism. The taxable income has a dependent relationship with the accounting income in the Brazilian corporate income tax system. One way to reduce the corporate tax base is to adopt conservative...

This paper documents earnings dynamics over the life-cycle and income level using a large administrative database from German tax records. I find that labor earnings display important deviations from the typical assumptions of linearity and normality. For the bottom earners, large income changes...

The purpose of this study is to reveal the relationship between real earnings management through sales manipulation and firm performance in Chinese A-listed companies. We analyze abnormal operating cash flows to identify real earnings management through sales manipulation. Fixed-effect panel...

Based on signal theory and legitimacy theory, this paper examines whether firms with financial reporting misstatements (restatements) would prefer conservative financial reporting to send signals regarding their determinants of improving financial reporting credibility and legitimate...

This paper examines whether African banks audited by a Big 4 auditor use loan loss provisions for earnings management purposes before, during and after the global financial crisis. It focuses on income smoothing as a type of earnings management. Using bank data from 21 African countries from...

We study banks’ year-end window dressing in the European Union to assess how it affects the identification of global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) and the associated capital surcharges. We find that G-SIBs compress their balance sheet at year-end to an extent that they can reduce their...

A widely cited paper, Cohen, Dey, and Lys (2008, hereinafter CDL), examines accrual (AEM) and real earnings management (REM) pre- and post-Sarbanes Oxley and provides evidence that, in the period immediately following SOX, accruals management declined and was substituted by REM. We re-visit CDL...

We investigate changes in financial reporting conservatism arising from disclosure-related shareholder lawsuits filed between 1996 and 2016. We find that sued firms respond to 10b-5 litigation with increased accounting conservatism. Consistent with a spillover effect, we also find that non-sued...

Studies have reported limited explanatory power of earnings due to reasons that include low quality of earnings. Though earnings management is permitted within the financial reporting framework in many jurisdictions, its practices depending on the intention and aggressiveness may dovetail into...

Objective - Loan loss provision is an accrual for the banking industry, and therefore has a significant effect on bank accounting earnings and capital requirements. Previous studies showed inconsistent results for the relationship between earnings management, signaling, and loan loss provision....

In spite of the extensive research about the impact of audit fees on audit quality, there is no research examining if the association between voluntary audits and audit pricing affects audit quality. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to empirically examine whether the effect of audit fees on...

This paper examines whether high-ability managers’ earnings smoothing is motivated by the need to mitigate the adverse effects of heightened information asymmetry triggered by mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on managers’ reputation capital (job loss) and firm value. We document that...

Despite several works on corporate governance examine the ownership structure on earnings management, the empirical research on Real Earnings Management (REM) is limited. Thus, the main purpose of the research is to examine the effect of family and managerial ownership on real earnings...

We examine the effect IFRS adoption has had on audit effort and the effectiveness of greater audit effort on constraining earnings management. While prior studies have examined the costs of IFRS adoption, it is unclear whether IFRS adoption affects audit effort and whether extra audit effort...

Objective - The purpose of this research is to obtain empirical research on the effect of corporate governance on earnings management in distressed and non-distressed companies. Corporate governance in this research is measured by independent board, audit committee, board of commissioners,...

Firms face a greater risk of lawsuits for overstated rather than understated earnings or net assets, suggesting conservatism can reduce firms’ expected legal costs. Because managers with legal expertise are more likely than other managers to recognize the legal benefits of conservatism, this...

We examine the impact of tax incentives on private firms’ earnings management based on a tax reform in China. Firms established after January 2002 face significant tax reduction, thus creating a large and persistent discontinuity in tax rates by establishment date. Using the regression...

A model with factors for earnings, liquidity, their respective growth, and the market can offer a consumption rationale with low pricing error. It also subsumes one-year momentum and momentum net of reversal, the factor commonly known as ‘momentum.’ These earnings and liquidity factors are...

This paper aims to explore the effect of the Algiers Stock Exchange listing on real earnings management. The study included 14 non-financial non-listed companies during the period 2015-2019 and six non-financial listed companies during the period 2010-2019. Due to the small number of companies...

Deferred tax and accruals have the characteristic of causing reported earnings to be above or below normal. Both are permitted to be used by companies in financial reporting. This study examines whether large deferred taxes and large accruals have an impact on the relationship between earnings...

This paper investigates whether corporate social responsibility active (CSR active) firms operate dissimilarly from other firms in their financial reporting. Specifically, we examine whether the corporate social responsibility (CSR) attitude of a firm sways its reporting incentives, in respect...

Aim/purpose - This paper aims at investigating whether the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers implementation in Poland has affected earnings management that uses discretion in revenue recognition to avoid losses and earnings decreases....

This study investigates real earnings management in family firms and further examines the moderating effects of the independence and compensation of directors. Based on a sample of 106 non-financial public listed firms over 5 years in Saudi Arabia, the empirical results show that family firms...

This study aims to explore the factors that influence the firm’s reported earnings quality (FREQ) for a sample of Egyptian firms from 2008 to 2019 by using panel data. The findings show that CEO power dynamics (CEO duality, CEO ownership, CEO tenure and CEO political connections) as negative...

Studies on the characteristics of insolvent firms' earnings management are critical, as the ripple effects of a firm's opportunistic accounting and insolvency on society can be widespread and significant. This study divides a dataset of unlisted firms into four groups (large firms that have...

One of the IPO-related anomalies that have been well-discussed in the finance literature is the IPO's long-running underperformance. Two of the major explanations of that phenomenon are: "Hot market" and earnings management. This study investigates the relative importance of these two...