Executive Turnover,Gender, And Earnings Management: An Exploratory Analysis

This paper examines the relationship between the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) turnover and earnings management. Based on cross‐sectional panel regressions on a three‐year sample of the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 1500 firms, the following findings are reported: (1) CFO turnover is accompanied by income‐decreasing earnings management; (2) discretionary accruals tend to become more negative when a male CFO is replaced by a female; (3) earnings management increases income if the outgoing CFO is a female and the incoming is a male and in the case of male–male CFO changes. Overall, these results indicate that the firms who hire a female CFO after a male tend to shift toward more conservative financial reporting practices.