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Book Competition  Capital Market Feedback  and Earnings Management

Download or read book Competition Capital Market Feedback and Earnings Management written by Jongsub Lee and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using economic deregulation as a quasi-natural experiment for increasing product market competition, we find increases in earnings manipulation and accounting frauds following deregulation. This “dark-side” of product market competition is particularly evident for deregulated firms in high market-to-book industries, where we find evidence of short-termism in the capital market. We further find that firms in these industries, if actively manage earnings, tend to make more acquisitions and have higher survival rates. Overall, our results are largely consistent with Shleifer (2004), who predicts an important interplay between product market competition and capital market valuation feedback that could induce misbehaving incentives among firms in competitive industries.

Book Earnings Management

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?

Book Market Competition and Earnings Management

Download or read book Market Competition and Earnings Management written by Dalia Marciukaityte and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We show that product market competition reduces agency problems by curtailing misleading earnings management and improving earnings informativeness. Using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index from the Census of Manufacturers to proxy for product market competition, we find that firms in more competitive industries are less likely to engage in earnings management as measured by the absolute value of discretionary accruals and they are more likely to engage in earnings smoothing improving earnings informativeness about future cash flows. Earnings smoothing ratios are higher in competitive markets and the positive relation between current discretionary accruals and future changes in operating cash flows is stronger in such markets. Moreover, we find that firms in competitive industries have lower analysts' earnings forecast errors and lower dispersion of earnings forecasts, suggesting lower information asymmetry between managers and the market. Stock-price informativeness is also higher in more competitive markets. Furthermore, forced earnings restatements and security fraud lawsuits are less common in such markets. When firms engage in misleading upward earnings management, in a competitive market they are more harshly punished by the stock market when the market learns about the misleading management. We find that firms engaging in such management experience worse long-term stock performance in competitive markets. In addition, the negative market reaction to the announcements of forced earnings restatements is stronger in competitive markets. Overall, our findings suggest that product market competition is an effective mechanism improving the accuracy of financial reporting and reducing the information asymmetry between managers and the market. Moreover, product market competition achieves more accurate reporting without incurring substantial costs often associated with government regulations of financial reporting or corporate governance.

Book International Financial Reporting Standards and New Directions in Earnings Management

Download or read book International Financial Reporting Standards and New Directions in Earnings Management written by Oliveira, Jonas da Silva and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2019-03-22 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fiscal market is an unpredictable torrent of information that modern organizations strive to understand. Business professionals dedicate themselves to understanding uncertain results around economic performance to improve management, reporting standards, and predict trends in financial statements. International Financial Reporting Standards and New Directions in Earnings Management is an essential reference source that discusses identifying the behavioral patterns of managers and the accounting policies they use in different opportunistic circumstances. Featuring research on topics such as earnings quality, risk reports, and investor protection, this book is ideal for regulatory authorities, accountants, impression managers, auditors, academics, students, and researchers seeking coverage on the theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies that relate to the different themes within earnings management.

Book Sunk Costs and Market Structure

Download or read book Sunk Costs and Market Structure written by John Sutton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sunk Costs and Market Structure bridges the gap between the new generation of game theoretic models that has dominated the industrial organization literature over the past ten years and the traditional empirical agenda of the subject as embodied in the structure-conduct-performance paradigm developed by Joe S. Bain and his successors.

Book Competition Culture and Corporate Finance

Download or read book Competition Culture and Corporate Finance written by Terry Harris and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-04-24 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces a measure of firms’ competition culture based on a textual analysis and natural language processing (NPL) of firms’ 10-K filings. Using this measure, the book explores the relationship between competition culture and various phenomena in corporate finance, specifically, institutional ownership structure, stock return performance, idiosyncratic stock price crash risk, meeting/beating analysts’ earnings expectations, and earnings management activity, for a large sample of US-based financial and non-financial firms. In particular, the book provides evidence that transient institutional ownership intensifies firms’ competition culture, while dedicated institutional ownership lessens it. In addition, the book’s findings suggest that firms with greater levels of competition culture achieve higher levels of short-term stock return performance, experience greater incidence of idiosyncratic stock price crashes, and are more prone to meet/beat analysts forecast and engage in accruals-based earnings manipulation. Finally, the book examines the role played by competition culture in financial firms (i.e., banks). Specifically, the book explores the effect of competition culture on bank lending and shows that banks with greater levels of competition culture are generally more prone to engage in procyclical lending activity. The findings of the book have significant policy implications and will be of interests to regulators, accounting standard-setters, managers and those charged with firm governance, career academics and researchers, graduates, and those generally interested in the role played by corporate culture in the related fields of finance, economics, and accounting.

Book Earnings Quality

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.

Book Organizations in the Face of Growing Competition in the Market

Download or read book Organizations in the Face of Growing Competition in the Market written by Anna Ujwary-Gil and published by Institute of Economics, Polish Academy of Sciences. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essence of the functioning of any organization, whether commercial or non-profit, is to provide value to groups of recipients whose expectations undoubtedly change over time. Various competition mechanisms in the market apply to both business-oriented organizations and organizations operating in the sphere of public utilities. This monograph includes examples of the problems facing contemporary organizations, and at the same time provides evidence, confirmed by research results, that indicates the direction of current changes. The analysis of changes taking place in organizations was carried out in many dimensions. The content layout adopted in the monograph presents four research perspectives, where the subject of the research is the organization; the modern tools used in organization management, the impact of the market economy on organizations, and sectoral or industry aspects of the organization’s functioning. In the first chapter, four studies related to commercial and non-commercial organizations have been collated. Researchers of academic organizations who in order to meet the expectations of students increase their activity in the field of entrepreneurship and their support for the most talented students. Both examples show the need to conduct research, develop knowledge about own activities, and focus on the needs of the environment. Entrepreneurial universities are open to the implementation of joint ventures with entities in their environment, which affect the development of the university, its students, as well as the entities. Entrepreneurship, which is based on the ability to take advantage of market opportunities, also creates opportunities for developing the ability to flexibly shape and adapt programs, methods and operating principles to the growing expectations of their environment. The ability to develop your potential as well as the potential of your students plays a crucial role. In the pursuit of excellence, a strong focus should be placed on talented students and the development of all possible forms of support that could determine an output of graduates with particularly high development potential. In the research presented in this monograph, the authors compare the activity of universities in the USA, the Netherlands, and Poland in the area of talent development. The comparative analysis becomes a valuable source of indicating imperfections, but also examples of potential forms of positive activity in this area. Equally important in this part of the monograph is the research on the learning organization. Through a bibliometric analysis, the author identified the fields of research on the learning organization. In addition to research areas related to various dimensions, primarily human, cultural and managerial, the types of organizations in which such research is most often conducted have been indicated. They also include the organizations of the two sectors presented: education and healthcare. The same part of the monograph also presents the results of research in the hotel sector, where the main research problem was the creation of customer value, taking into account the conditions stimulating the dynamics of the business models of hotel enterprises. Referring to business models was considered important because of the significance of decision-making patterns that help to build a competitive advantage and achieve market success by creating value for customers. The concept of creating value for customers is currently treated in cross-sectoral or industry categories and is a universal approach to managing organizations. The second chapter of the monograph presents research on the modern tools used in organization management. Concepts such as work–life balance, shaping the innovation process within the framework of decisions taken in the process, marketing communication, or the use of gamification in research and development, are examples of a wide range of relationships between today’s organization and its surroundings. Finding employees, and retaining them, is also a growing challenge in developing countries, where labor supply is steadily decreasing. The expectations of employees are increasing, especially in relation to respecting the personal, non-professional side of life. Thus, it should be recognized that research on work–life balance is a developing space for organization and management researchers. Modeling the innovation process in an organization is another research trend that is important today, especially in terms of developing competitiveness. Decision-making is one of the key components of the innovation process. This aspect, in qualitative terms, was presented in the next study in the second part of the monograph. Similarly, marketing communication is invariably an important area of research in organizations, which has evolved due to rapidly developing information technologies and, at the same time, the changing preferences of users of these technologies. The last study in this second part of the monograph relates to innovation and the use of computer games. The tools of gamification are used to shape the attitudes of individual energy consumers. The observations presented show that it is worth making attempts to use unconventional methods and tools, in this case, to develop customer knowledge and strengthen the behaviors desired in the energy market. The third chapter of the monograph is devoted to the financial aspects of the functioning of commercial and non-profit organizations in a market economy. Increasing the efficiency of public entities, specifically conditioned in economic policies and dependent on political decisions, has been the subject of numerous studies. The research study presented in the monograph refers to the relationship between financial strategies and profit management in public industrial companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. It is worth noting that no research in this field has been conducted to date in the context of the Polish capital market. The next study refers to the French market. Its purpose was to evaluate and test long-term memory in the French stock exchanges. Research results contribute significantly to explaining the lack of consensus regarding long memory in stock returns. The research covers a significant, 25-year period of operation of the Euronext platform during which 6634 observations were provided. The conclusions of the study may be particularly important for regulators and risk managers. Another study presents the results of bankruptcy risk tests for Polish and Czech logistics companies using a comprehensive classification approach. As a result of the research, a tool for risk assessment and forecasting was developed, enabling the early prediction of bankruptcy of enterprises. At the end of the third chapter of the monograph, the results of health expenditure analysis based on information provided by the Health Account System are presented. Particular attention has been focused on the programming sources of financing healthcare in new European Union countries. Socio-technical and environmental aspects of the organization are the subject of interest of researchers presenting the results of their research in the fourth chapter of the monograph. The problems of economic migration and working conditions have been the subject of interest for many years in the strongly developing trend of labor market research. The research results contained in the study relate primarily to the issues of occupational safety of Ukrainians employed in Poland. These issues are gaining importance, especially when the number of people migrating from Ukraine to Poland in search of work has been growing for several years. In the face of such a large scale of Ukrainian immigrants employed in Polish enterprises, there is still a lack of regulations protecting or securing the interests of employees and employers. The next research presentation highlights the problems of the “circular economy,” which, according to the author, is developing too slowly in Poland. The research is valuable for systematizing the idea of a circular economy based on the theoretical and practical aspects of this phenomenon. The results of the analysis are also of practical importance for the process of modeling and implementing this idea in Poland. Further, the innovation paradigm of economic health and the prosperity of society is the subject of the research carried out, based on a review of the health economy considering innovation and its impact on population growth and prosperity in the world. The research particularly highlights the consequences of socio-demographic, environmental and business changes in the field of consumer goods. The socio-technical, as well as the environmental, aspects of the organization are also included in the last study presented. The purpose of this study was to identify the attitudes of IT employees in the Polish ITC sector towards remote work. Since the effective and efficient collaboration of distributed employees performing remote work has become even more necessary for the success of projects, numerous research works are being conducted focusing on the consequences of remote work. The presented research results are an important contribution to the discussion of researchers and management practitioners. By publishing this monograph, which covers a wide spectrum of research problems in contemporary commercial and non-profit organizations, the editors and authors presenting the results of their research express a hope that they are contributing to the widespread dissemination and enrichment of knowledge and, consequently, socio-economic development.

Book Regulating Competition in Stock Markets

Download or read book Regulating Competition in Stock Markets written by Lawrence R. Klein and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to curbing monopoly power in stock markets Engaging and informative, Regulating Competition in Stock Markets skillfully analyzes the impact of the recent global financial crisis on health and happiness, and uses this opportunity to put regulatory systems in perspective. Happiness is lost because of emotional and physical health deterioration resulting from the crisis. Therefore, the authors conclude that financial crisis prevention should be the focus of public policy. This book is the most comprehensive study so far on potential risks to the stock market, especially various forms of market manipulation that lead to mania and eventual crisis. Based on litigation cases from international stock markets, and borrowing multidisciplinary findings in the fields of finance, economics, accounting, media studies, criminology, legal studies, psychology, and medicine, this book is the first to provide thorough micro-level regulatory proposals rooted in financial reality. By focusing on securities trading, they apply antitrust measures to limiting monopolistic power that is used for the manipulation of investors' perception and monopolistic profit. These proposals are quantifiable, adjustable, inexpensive, and can be easily implemented by any securities regulating agency for real-time oversight and daily operations. The recommendations found here are intended to improve the fairness and transparency of the financial markets, thereby perfecting the market competition, protecting investors, stabilizing the market, and preventing crises Explores how avoiding crises can to contribute to a more scientific, health aware, and civilized economic and social development Written by a team of authors who have extensive experience in this dynamic field, including Nobel Laureate Lawrence R. Klein Since the founding of the first, organized stock exchange in Amsterdam 400 years ago, no systematic economic research results on stock markets have been implemented in stock market regulation around the world. Regulating Competition in Stock Markets aims to fill this void.

Book Earnings Management and Corporate Finance

Download or read book Earnings Management and Corporate Finance written by Joanna Lizińska and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today's dynamic landscape of accounting, corporate finance, and business management, earnings management has assumed paramount importance. Transparent and reliable accounting information is crucial for accurate corporate performance forecasting and financial decision-making. This book uniquely discusses practical earnings management methods within the accounting and taxation realms. It is supported by extensive international evidence linking informativeness of financial reports to companies’ financial decisions. Delving into the earnings management process, this book provides profound insights into how profits can be influenced through accounting choices and real business transactions. Real-life case studies will undoubtedly facilitate the understanding of accounting and taxation methods. Additionally, it unravels key elements of corporate finance puzzles related to the transparency of financial reports, including the macroeconomic environment, profit thresholds, cash management, audit quality, financing decisions, and financial health. With broad empirical evidence from various European countries, it multidimensionally explores the important link between the quality of information in financial statements and trade-offs behind financial decisions. The book serves as a valuable reference for international researchers in corporate finance, accounting, and corporate governance. It is also a powerful tool for business practitioners, including owners, lenders, auditors, regulatory and professional bodies, business partners, or other market participants. For those seeking the latest insights on earnings management, those producing or assessing accounting information, and those using financial reports in their research or business practice, this book is a must-read.

Book The Effects of Competition

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.

Book Introduction to Earnings Management

Download or read book Introduction to Earnings Management written by Malek El Diri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-20 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides researchers and scholars with a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of earnings management theory and literature. While it raises new questions for future research, the book can be also helpful to other parties who rely on financial reporting in making decisions like regulators, policy makers, shareholders, investors, and gatekeepers e.g., auditors and analysts. The book summarizes the existing literature and provides insight into new areas of research such as the differences between earnings management, fraud, earnings quality, impression management, and expectation management; the trade-off between earnings management activities; the special measures of earnings management; and the classification of earnings management motives based on a comprehensive theoretical framework.

Book Comparative Research on Earnings Management  Corporate Governance  and Economic Value

Download or read book Comparative Research on Earnings Management Corporate Governance and Economic Value written by Vieira, Elisabete S. and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2021-02-12 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New trends are emerging regarding earnings management and corporate governance showing similarities and striking differences in the practices of different countries and economies. These new trends currently shape the field of modern corporate governance with crucial issues being looked at in governance law and practices, accounting systems, earnings quality and management, stakeholder involvement, and more. In order to advance these new avenues in corporate governance, research looks at accounting policies firms use in different opportunistic circumstances in order to manage earnings, the corporate governance practices in different countries, firm performance, and other dimensions of companies. The understanding of these topics is beneficial in understanding the current state of different types of firms and their practices in modern times. Comparative Research on Earnings Management, Corporate Governance, and Economic Value is focused on the investigation of key challenges and perspectives of corporate governance and earnings management and outlines possible scenarios of its development. The chapters explore this new avenue of research and cover theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies related to different themes in the global context of earnings management and corporate governance. This book is ideal for economists, businesses, managers, accountants, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in the current issues and advancements in corporate governance and earnings management.

Book Product Market Competition and Earnings Management

Download or read book Product Market Competition and Earnings Management written by Guifeng Shi and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, we employ a firm-level measure of product market competition constructed from the textual analysis of firms' 10-K filings and examine the relationship between managerial perceived competition pressure and firms' earnings management. We find that misstatement is positively related to product market competition, which is consistent with the notion that competition pressure increases managerial incentives to manage earnings. We also find that real earnings management is negatively related to product market competition. This suggests that real earnings management involves actions that decrease firms' competitiveness and is costly for firms under high competition pressure.

Book Understanding the Polish Capital Market

Download or read book Understanding the Polish Capital Market written by Marek Dietl and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first stock exchange in Warsaw – capital city of the Kingdom of Poland– was established in 1817. Over the past 205 years, the fortunes of the capital market have been closely linked to the "bumpy road" of Polish history. The establishment of the GPW Warsaw Stock Exchange in 1991 was a landmark for transformation from a centrally planned communist economy to a market-driven capitalist one. Since the doors of the exchange reopened, Polish GDP per capita (current USD) increased eight times, translating into an average yearly growth rate of over 7%. The capital market has played a pivotal role in the economic success of Poland over the last three decades. It is not easy to precisely quantify the impact, as it was rather a spill-over effect. Economic growth has fostered the development of a capital market, and more efficient conversion of savings to investments via the capital market. The excellence of capital market institutions can be gauged with reference to various parameters. A synthetic measure is so-called market status. According to FTSE Russell (global index provider), Polish capital attained developed market status in 2018, being the first and only post-communist state to do so. It is fair to say that transformation has been completed and developed market status indicates clearly that the institutions and regulations are world class. The current challenge is competing with other developed markets for the best issuers and offering the most demanding investors an excellent trading experience. This book offers scientific insight into the Polish capital market story. Authored by a group of renowned scholars, with contributions aspiring to the highest academic standards for theoretical considerations and empirical research. The book covers various topics, including links between monetary policy and capital markets, micro and macro market structures, and investors and issuers' behaviour and strategies. All chapters are rooted in contemporary finance theory, supported by various econometric models based on the most recently available data. The book aims to provide academics and practitioners insight into the Polish capital market, appealing especially to those interested in gaining a deeper understanding of emerging markets' successful transformation into developed ones. It can also be used as supplementary reading for doctoral and master’s students in finance, particularly relating to capital markets and economics – predominantly development economics and economic policy.

Book Line Item Analysis of Earnings Quality

Download or read book Line Item Analysis of Earnings Quality written by Melumad Nahum and published by Now Publishers Inc. This book was released on 2009 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Line-Item Analysis of Earnings Quality provides a comprehensive summary and analysis of the specific earnings quality issues pertaining to key line item components of the financial statements. After providing an overview of earnings quality and earnings management, Line-Item Analysis of Earnings Quality analyzes key line items from the financial statements. For each key line item, the authors: review accounting principles; discuss implications for earnings quality; evaluate the susceptibility of the item to manipulation; describe analyses and red flags which may inform on the item's quality. Line-Item Analysis of Earnings Quality will prove useful in conducting fundamental and contextual analyses through its analysis and evaluations.

Book New Perspectives of Profit Smoothing

Download or read book New Perspectives of Profit Smoothing written by Domitilla Magni and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a first approximation, profit may seem like a simple and intuitive concept, but the definition is not limited to a single conceptual category. Analysis of the definition and role of profit must be implemented with a study at the corporate level. This book discusses the phenomenon of profit smoothing, implemented by management, which aims to maintain a constant flow of profit over time. On an operational level, the phenomenon of profit smoothing analyses and determines the correlation existing between a shock to a variable at the corporate level and the relationship between this shock and profit. This book discusses the main reasons, at the strategic level, of the phenomenon of profit smoothing and summarizes this into three groups. Firstly, the functionality of this phenomenon for corporate management is to transmit to the external environment, and especially to external investors, a business reality devoid of crisis and imbalances. Secondly, this initial motivation engages basically the second. In fact, levelling the trend of profit from year to year, top management can reduce the risk perceived from the outsiders and as from the company’s insiders. Thirdly, this justification is related to the stability of the flow of dividends. Profit smoothing places great emphasis on the phenomenon of dividends. It should be note how in fact the profit smoothing is used to keep the expectations of shareholders profit from one period to another. This book is focused on the profit smoothing and, in particular, how this phenomenon is established in developing-economies like the Chinese one, and will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of corporate finance.