Download or read book Measuring the Pervasiveness of Earnings Management from Quarterly Accrual Volatility written by Zhaoyang Gu and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Earnings management is a key issue for financial reporting. The purpose of this paper is to derive a set of indices to measure the pervasiveness of earnings management (PEM) using the properties of quarterly accrual volatility. The PEM index can be viewed as a quality measure of financial reporting and an effectiveness measure for financial monitoring. In contrast to mean-shifting studies in the literature, our measure based on accrual volatility yields two major advantages. First, it relieves us of the necessity of precise assumptions regarding economic events. Second, it provides a macro-perspective on the overall patterns in earnings management. The methodology based on accrual volatility can address issues like the earnings quality, the nature of the informational environment, and the effect of accounting standard setting. The seasonal pattern of accrual volatility can provide a trace of earnings management, even in the absence of further information about specific economic events and resulting managerial actions. Our working hypothesis is that pervasive earnings management leads to the first order stochastic dominance of fourth quarter accrual volatility over the other three quarters. We provide evidence on the relations between previously documented drivers of earnings management and seasonal accrual heteroskedasticity. These drivers include executive compensation, regulatory requirements, bond covenants, and political costs. This empirical support of our working hypothesis validates our application of Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) Distance to measure the pervasiveness of earnings management (PEM). We use raw total accruals as the basis for measuring PEM1 and use residuals from Jones? [1991] model to control for mechanical factors in our measurement of PEM2. The usefulness of controls is an empirical issue. Our results suggest that additional controls do not add much power to detect earnings management over and above the simplest measure based on total accruals. KS Distance is powerful in detecting the difference around the central locations of two distributions, but not powerful at the tail ends. We develop two other measures for PEM. First, we estimate the fraction of fourth quarter accruals volatility exceeding the 95th percentile value for the first three quarters (base period) distribution. This fraction, reduced by 5%, constitutes PEM3. Second, we design a simulation method to determine PEM4 as the percentage of firms with a given magnitude of accrual adjustment for the base period accrual volatility to match that of the fourth quarter. Both PEM3 and PEM4 are estimates of percentage of firms involved in earnings management of a given magnitude. However, we should note here that our PEM indices are more likely ordinal than cardinal measures. Though our methods of measuring PEM rely on indirect measurement, we provide direct evidence on the relevance of our method through a series of external validation checks. First, we use a subsample of firms subject to SEC actions relating to alleged earnings manipulation. This data was collected from Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAER's) by the SEC. We compare PEM?s for the AAER sample to PEM?s for the COMPUSTAT sample to assess the power of our measures. The PEM indices for the AAER sample are two to three times as large as the PEM indices for the COMPUSTAT sample. Though we avoid interpreting the relative magnitudes literally, these differences do suggest a positive correlation between our PEM indices and the degree of earnings management. Second, we conduct case studies for 10 firms identified by fourth quarter accrual volatility as strongly suspect of earnings management. These studies show that suspect firms frequently engage in activities associated with earnings management, such as CEO turnover, restructuring, public offerings, or they experience losses. Applying our PEM indices to COMPUSTAT data, we find that pervasiveness of earnings management has been relatively stable in the period of 1988-1996.

Download or read book Applied Mergers and Acquisitions written by Robert F. Bruner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-02-08 with total page 1056 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guide to the world of mergers and acquisitions Why do so many M&A transactions fail? And what drives the success of those deals that are consummated? Robert Bruner explains that M&A can be understood as a response by managers to forces of turbulence in their environment. Despite the material failure rates of mergers and acquisitions, those pulling the trigger on key strategic decisions can make them work if they spend great care and rigor in the development of their M&A deals. By addressing the key factors of M&A success and failure, Applied Mergers and Acquisitions can help readers do this. Written by one of the foremost thinkers and educators in the field, this invaluable resource teaches readers the art and science of M&A valuation, deal negotiation, and bargaining, and provides a framework for considering tradeoffs in an effort to optimize the value of any M&A deal.

Download or read book The Use of Unsigned Earnings Quality Measures in Tests of Earnings Management written by Paul Hribar and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several recent papers employ unsigned measures of discretionary accruals to test hypotheses that predict general classes of firms will engage in earnings management, without specifying the direction or the time period in which the earnings management occurs. We argue that the research design choices using unsigned measures of earnings management heighten the threat of correlated omitted variables because these measures are correlated with stable firm characteristics. We provide evidence on the correlation between unsigned measures of discretionary accruals and firm characteristics such as market value of equity, total assets, sales growth, leverage, book-to-market ratios, cash from operations, volatility of sales, volatility of earnings, and volatility of cash flows. Our results show that unsigned measures have the highest correlations with volatility of sales, volatility of earnings, and volatility of cash flows, despite the fact that prior work often ignores these characteristics. We generate simulations to show that even modest correlation between these volatility metrics and the partitioning variable dramatically inflates the risk of incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis of no earnings management. Finally, we replicate a recent study and we demonstrate that inferences change with the inclusion of these volatility measures in tests of earnings management based on unsigned discretionary accruals. Our results inform researchers of the potential hazards posed by correlated omitted variables in research designs that use unsigned measures of earnings management.

Download or read book Essays on the Financial Reporting and Price Implications of Managerial Ownership and Contingent Consideration in Business Acquisitions written by Kofi Appiah Okyere and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Earnings Management written by Joshua Ronen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-08-06 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of earnings management, aimed at scholars and professionals in accounting, finance, economics, and law. The authors address research questions including: Why are earnings so important that firms feel compelled to manipulate them? What set of circumstances will induce earnings management? How will the interaction among management, boards of directors, investors, employees, suppliers, customers and regulators affect earnings management? How to design empirical research addressing earnings management? What are the limitations and strengths of current empirical models?

Download or read book Implications of the Integral Approach and Earnings Management for Alternate Annual Reporting Periods written by Katherine Gunny and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We compare earnings for the last twelve months ending in quarter four (i.e., fiscal year earnings), three, two and one. Prior literature offers two competing explanations for why fourth quarter earnings exhibit higher volatility than other interim quarters. Under the first explanation, GAAP assumes that quarterly earnings are an integral part of annual earnings and are used to settle up annual earnings. Any estimation errors in the preceding three quarters are corrected through fourth quarter earnings, which could make them more volatile. Under the second explanation, compensation and lending contracts based on fiscal year earnings lead to a concentration of earnings management in the fourth quarter and thus more volatile fourth quarter earnings. Although both explanations have similar predictions for the properties of quarterly earnings, our simulations show that these explanations, as suggested by Lipe and Bernard 2000, have distinct implications for the properties of annual earnings ending in quarter four, three, two and one. Overall, our results are more consistent with earnings management than settling up. In addition, we examine the relative earnings attributes and find that fiscal year earnings attributes rank lower on dimensions of accrual quality, persistence, predictability, and smoothness. Finally, we re-investigate the accrual anomaly and find that the accrual anomaly is more pronounced for fiscal year earnings.

Download or read book Earnings Quality written by Jennifer Francis and published by Now Publishers Inc. This book was released on 2008 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This review lays out a research perspective on earnings quality. We provide an overview of alternative definitions and measures of earnings quality and a discussion of research design choices encountered in earnings quality research. Throughout, we focus on a capital markets setting, as opposed, for example, to a contracting or stewardship setting. Our reason for this choice stems from the view that the capital market uses of accounting information are fundamental, in the sense of providing a basis for other uses, such as stewardship. Because resource allocations are ex ante decisions while contracting/stewardship assessments are ex post evaluations of outcomes, evidence on whether, how and to what degree earnings quality influences capital market resource allocation decisions is fundamental to understanding why and how accounting matters to investors and others, including those charged with stewardship responsibilities. Demonstrating a link between earnings quality and, for example, the costs of equity and debt capital implies a basic economic role in capital allocation decisions for accounting information; this role has only recently been documented in the accounting literature. We focus on how the precision of financial information in capturing one or more underlying valuation-relevant constructs affects the assessment and use of that information by capital market participants. We emphasize that the choice of constructs to be measured is typically contextual. Our main focus is on the precision of earnings, which we view as a summary indicator of the overall quality of financial reporting. Our intent in discussing research that evaluates the capital market effects of earnings quality is both to stimulate further research in this area and to encourage research on related topics, including, for example, the role of earnings quality in contracting and stewardship.

Download or read book An Alternative Measure to Detect Intentional Earnings Management Through Discretionary Accruals written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Synthesis and Analysis of Models Measuring Accrual Based and Real Activities Earnings Management written by Anna-Fani Constantatos and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This chapter provides a description of the nowadays most commonly used methods for measuring earnings management in the accounting and finance literature. First, it covers the most important and commonly used models of accrual based earnings management (i.e., Jones, 1991; Dechow et al., 1995; Teoh et al., 1998 a, b; DeFond and Park, 2001; Dechow and Dichev, 2002; Larcker and Richardson, 2004; Kothari et al., 2005 and Dechow et al., 2012). In sequence, it describes the most important and commonly used models that examine real activities earnings management (Roychowdhury, 2006; Gunny, 2010). Finally, the chapter summarises briefly the most common determinants and motives for earnings management. On that basis, this chapter provides a practical guidance on how scholars can apply earnings management models, after considering their advantages and disadvantages. It also considers the suggested solutions offered in the literature, which aim to overcome problems in their implementation.

Download or read book Earnings Management and Accounting Income Aggregation written by John Jacob and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quarterly earnings allow aggregation into annual earnings in four different ways. Fiscal year reported earnings is one of these four possible measures of annual earnings, the others being earnings for years ending at the first, second and third fiscal quarters. We provide evidence on earnings management in fiscal year earnings relative to these three alternative measures of firms' annual earnings. We confirm prior findings in Burgstahler and Dichev (1997) of discontinuities around zero and around prior year earnings in histograms of fiscal year earnings. Subsequent research questions whether these discontinuities are evidence of earnings management or whether they are attributable to biases induced by taxes, scaling and sample selection. Using the histograms of our alternative annual earnings measures, we offer additional evidence in this debate. We also find evidence of earnings management in broader intervals around thresholds. We believe that our research design is better suited to test for earnings management in these broader intervals than those used in prior studies. We also compare the statistical properties of fiscal year earnings to annual earnings starting with the fiscal year quarters two, three and four. We find that the variance and kurtosis of earnings are higher for fiscal year earnings while skewness of earnings is lower at the fiscal year. These results are more consistent with earnings management than with the effects induced by 'settling up' in fourth quarter earnings. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on the prevalence, effects of and factors associated with earnings management.

Download or read book The Use of Unsigned Earnings Quality Measures in Tests of Earnings Management written by Paul Hribar and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the implications of using the absolute value of discretionary accruals when testing for earnings management. First, we analytically develop the mean and variance of the distribution of absolute discretionary accruals, and show that the expected value is an increasing function of the variance in the underlying error term from the first-stage discretionary accrual estimation model. Second, we highlight several firm characteristics that are related to the error variance in discretionary accrual estimation models. Using simulations, we show that correlation between the earnings management partitioning variable and these firm characteristics leads to an overrejection of the null hypothesis of no earnings management. Third, we provide research design suggestions to help researchers mitigate the potential bias arising from the use of unsigned measures of earnings management. Using these suggestions, we replicate a recent study, and demonstrate that the inferences change after controlling for operating volatility.

Download or read book Earnings Management written by Kathleen Yates and published by Nova Science Publishers. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Earnings management is an issue that directly affects the overall integrity and quality of financial reporting and to date, many studies have been conducted in an attempt to gain an understanding of whether firms are engaging in earnings management, why they do so, what are the motives that drive managers' discretionary behaviour, what are the economic consequences and whether investors can see through this behaviour? In this book, Chapter One reviews the developments and the trends in the contemporary earnings management research and discuss several possible avenues for future research. Chapter Two provides an overview of the most recent studies on earnings management in relation to the financial crisis and the institutional environment and firm characteristics. Chapter Three provides a description of the nowadays most commonly used methods for measuring earnings management in accounting and finance literature. Chapter Four examines earnings management and corporate social responsibility as an entrenchment strategy.

Download or read book How are Earnings Managed An Examination of Specific Accruals written by Christine I. Wiedman and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is relatively little evidence on the specific accruals used to manage earnings. This paper examines this issue by considering the use of specific accruals in three earnings management contexts: equity offerings, management buyouts, and firms avoiding earnings decreases. We argue that the costs of managing earnings through different income statement items vary and that the benefits of earnings management through each of these items depend upon the context. We thus make differential predictions regarding which specific accrual will be used to manage earnings in each of the three contexts we consider. To measure earnings management for specific accruals, we develop performance-matched measures to capture the unexpected component of accounts receivable, inventory, accounts payable, accrued liabilities, depreciation expense, and special items. Consistent with our predictions, we find that firms issuing equity appear to prefer managing earnings upward by accelerating revenue recognition. Specifically, we find that accounts receivable for these firms are unexpectedly high. Conversely, for the management buyout context we predict and find unexpected accounts receivable to be negative. For firms trying to avoid reporting an earnings decrease, we expect firms to be less concerned with earnings persistence and therefore more likely to use more transitory, and less costly, items to achieve their goal. We find that special items are significantly more positive for this group. This paper provides a further step towards understanding how the incentives behind earnings management affect the method used to achieve earnings goals and also illustrates the usefulness of examining individual accruals in specific contexts.

Download or read book Short Term Earnings Guidance and Accrual Based Earnings Management written by Andrew C. Call and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Motivated by recent practitioners' concerns that short-term earnings guidance leads to managerial myopia, we investigate the impact of short-term earnings guidance on earnings management. Using a propensity-score matched control sample, we find strong and consistent evidence that the issuance of short-term quarterly earnings guidance is associated with less, rather than more, earnings management. We also find that regular guiders exhibit less earnings management than do less regular guiders. Our findings hold using both abnormal accruals and discretionary revenues to measure earnings management, and after controlling for potential reverse causality concerns. Furthermore, in a setting where managers have particularly strong capital market incentives to manage earnings, we corroborate the above findings by documenting that earnings guidance either has no impact on or actually mitigates earnings management. Overall, our evidence does not support the criticism from practitioners that short-term earnings guidance leads to more earnings management.

Download or read book Dissertation Abstracts International written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Strategy Implementation written by Michael A. Hitt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scholars examine the crucial role of implementation influencing how business and managerial strategies produce returns. They focus on governance, resources, human capital, and accounting-based control systems, advancing our understanding of strategy implementation and identifying opportunities for future research on this important process.

Download or read book The Effects of Competition written by George Symeonidis and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2002-01-18 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theoretical and empirical study of the effects of competition across a broad range of industries. Policies to promote competition are high on the political agenda worldwide. But in a constantly changing marketplace, the effects of more intense competition on firm conduct, market structure, and industry performance are often hard to distinguish. This study combines game-theoretic models with empirical evidence from a "natural experiment" of policy reform. The introduction in the United Kingdom of the 1956 Restrictive Trade Practices Act led to the registration and subsequent abolition of explicit restrictive agreements between firms and the intensification of price competition across a range of manufacturing industries. An equally large number of industries were not affected by the legislation. Using data from before and after the 1956 act, this book compares the two groups of industries to determine the effect of price competition on concentration, firm and plant numbers, profitability, advertising intensity, and innovation. The book avoids two problems common to empirical studies of competition: how to measure the intensity of competition and how to unravel the links between competition and other variables. Because the change in the intensity of competition had an external cause, there is no need to measure the intensity of competition directly, and it is possible to identify one-way causal effects when estimating the impact of competition. The book also examines issues such as the industries in which collusion is more likely to occur; the effect of cartels and cartel laws on market structure and profitability; the links between competition, advertising, and innovation; and the constraints on the exercise of merger and antitrust policies.