Detecting earnings management using cross-sectional abnormal accruals models

This paper examines specification and power issues in relation to three models used to estimate abnormal accruals. In contrast to the majority of prior work evaluating models estimated in time-series, we examine the performance of cross-sectionally estimated models. In addition to testing the standard-Jones (Jones, 1991) and modified-Jones (Dechow et al., 1995) models, we also develop and test a new specification, labelled the ‘margin model’. Consistent with prior US research employing time-series specifications of the two Jones models, our findings suggest that each of the three cross-sectional models are well specified when applied to a random sample of firm-years. However, the margin model appears to generate relatively better specified estimates of abnormal accruals when cash flow performance is extreme. Analysis of the models' ability to detect artificially induced earnings management indicates that all three procedures are capable of generating relatively powerful tests for economically plausible levels of accruals management (e.g., less than 10% of lagged total assets). Regarding their relative performance, the standard-Jones and modified-Jones models are found to be more powerful for revenue and bad debt manipulations. In contrast, the margin appears to be more powerful at detecting non-bad debt expense manipulations.     

Propping through related party transactions

Based on a sample of Chinese listed firms from 1998 through 2002, this paper documents that listed firms prop up earnings by using abnormal related sales to their controlling owners. Such related sales propping is more prevalent among state-owned firms and in regions with weaker economic institutions. We also find that these abnormal related sales are not entirely accrual-based but can be cash-based as well, and they serve as a substitute rather than complement to accruals management for meeting earnings targets. Since these abnormal related sales can be cash-based, there is significant cash transfer via related lending from listed firms back to controlling owners after the propping. However, no cash transfer via related lending is found to be associated with accruals earnings management.     

Accruals and firm life cycle: Improving regulatory earnings management detection

Regulators have invested considerable energy into developing analytical tools to better detect earnings management. We propose that firms in similar life cycle stages (LCSs) face similar strategic concerns, managerial pressures, growth prospects, etc., and that the commonality in these factors contribute to the “normal” accruals generating process. Consistent with this prediction, we simulate various earnings management conditions and find that accruals models are misspecified in detecting manipulation within particular LCSs; in particular, introduction, shakeout, and decline firms are over-identified as manipulators, while growth and mature firms are under-identified as manipulators when LCS is not used to estimate accruals. Weighted average performance across life cycle stages reveals that LCS estimation of discretionary accruals substantially improves successful detection and reduces Type I errors relative to other grouping alternatives. The combined improvement across both Type I and Type II errors is over 70% for both the modified Jones and discretionary revenue models of accruals-based earnings management.     

The Role of Accruals in Asymmetrically Timely Gain and Loss Recognition

We investigate the role of accrual accounting in the asymmetrically timely recognition (incorporation in reported earnings) of gains and losses. Timely recognition requires accruals when it precedes complete realization of the gains and losses in cash. We show that nonlinear accruals models incorporating the asymmetry in gain and loss recognition (timelier loss recognition, or conditional conservatism) offer a substantial specification improvement, explaining substantially more variation in accruals than equivalent linear specifications. Conversely, conventional linear accruals models, by omitting the loss recognition asymmetry, exhibit substantial attenuation bias and offer a comparatively poor specification of the accounting accrual process. Linear specifications also understate the ability of current earnings to predict future cash flows. These findings have implications for our understanding of accrual accounting and conservatism, as well as for researchers estimating discretionary accruals, earnings management, and earnings quality.     

The association of aggregate and disaggregated earnings with annual stock returns

This study compares aggregate earnings and disaggregated earnings (cash from operations, current accruals and non-current accruals) in terms of their associations with stock returns. A cross-sectional approach is adopted using Australian data over a six-year period. This analysis is undertaken for two different models of the relation between earnings and returns: one model relating returns to the magnitude of earnings, and the other relating returns to the combination of levels of, and changes in, earnings. In each model, the disaggregated regression is generally a superior explanator of stock returns, implying that disaggregated earnings provides richer information about firm performance, in a purely statistical sense, than aggregate earnings. Thus, disaggregated earnings are more informative, even in the most simple of comparison modes, linear regression.     

Are Accruals during Initial Public Offerings Opportunistic?

We find evidence that initial public offering (IPO) firms, on average, have high positive issue-year earnings and abnormal accruals, followed by poor long-run earnings and negative abnormal accruals. The IPO-year abnormal, and not expected, accruals explain the cross-sectional variation in post-issue earnings and stock returns. The results are robust with respect to alternative abnormal accruals and earnings performance measures. IPO firms adopt more income-increasing depreciation policies when they deviate from similar prior performance same industry non-issuers, and they provide significantly less for uncollectible accounts receivable than their matched non-issuers. The results taken together suggest opportunistic earnings management partially explains the new issues anomaly.     

The Effect of Earnings–Announcement Timing on Earnings Management

This paper examines whether firms which delay earnings announcements engage in earnings management. The cross–sectional version of the modified Jones 1995 model is used to estimate 'normal' accruals. Prior research has documented that, on average, delayed earnings announcements are associated with negative earnings surprises. Our evidence suggests that the market anticipates unfavorable earnings news when it observes reporting delays. As a consequence, late reporters appear to make the most of a bad situation by employing income–decreasing accruals in big–bath–type earnings management and in contractual renegotiations. We find that the magnitude of income–reducing abnormal accruals is related to the reporting lag.     

Accruals,Cash Flows,and Equity Values

We find, as predicted, that the differential ability of accrual and cash flow components of earnings to help forecast future abnormal earnings and the persistence of the components result in the components having different valuation implications. We base our tests on Ohlson (1999) applied to fourteen industries. We find: (1) Accruals and cash flows aid in forecasting future abnormal earnings incremental to abnormal earnings and equity book value. (2) Accruals and cash flows provide explanatory power for equity market value incremental to equity book value and abnormal earnings. (3) There is evidence that accruals and cash flows valuation coefficients are consistent with the Ohlson model.     

Unexpected Accruals and Conditional Accounting Conservatism

Abstract:  This paper examines the impact of management discretion over accruals on conditional accounting conservatism, defined as the tendency of accountants to recognize bad news on a timelier basis than good news. Prior research suggests that conditional accounting conservatism reflected in earnings is mainly due to the accrual component of earnings, not the cash flow component of earnings. After decomposing total accruals into expected and unexpected accruals, I find that (1) conditional accounting conservatism reflected in accruals is mainly due to unexpected accruals; (2) the negative association between unconditional and conditional accounting conservatism is mainly attributable to unexpected accruals; and (3) firms with higher leverage exhibit conditionally more conservative accounting primarily through unexpected accruals. These results are robust to accrual models that take into account the systematic association between accruals and cash flows and their non-linearity and to the asymmetric persistence of earnings changes specification of conditional accounting conservatism. Taken together, these results suggest that managers exercise their discretion over accruals to expedite the recognition of bad news rather than good news.     

Earnings management surrounding CEO changes

This paper investigates the extent of earnings management in the periods surrounding CEO changes by Australian firms. Evidence is presented of incoming CEOs undertaking earnings management to reduce income in the year of CEO change, with abnormal and extraordinary items being the primary vehicle through which this is achieved. This result is consistent with the notion of new CEOs engaging in an 'earnings bath', and is strongest for non–routine CEO changes, where the opportunities to manage earnings are greatest. Extending prior work, classification of CEO changes as routine or non–routine is based on an expanded information search, and this provides insights into the CEO change process and identifies problems with simpler mechanistic classification methods. Additionally, detailed information of the operation of the modified Jones model for estimating expected accruals is presented, and this is consistent with such models having low explanatory power in identifying abnormal accruals.     

Earnings management and abnormal returns: Evidence from the 1970–1972 Price Control Regulations

We examine the association between abnormal returns and earnings management in the context of price control regulations to test the construct validity of the earnings management model. Abnormal returns are used as a market–based measure, and discretionary accruals are employed to measure earnings management. Our results support the hypotheses that (1) price control regulations affect firms' security prices negatively, (2) firms make income–decreasing discretionary accruals to increase the likelihood of price increase approval, and (3) firms that are affected most negatively by the regulations manage earnings more aggressively. We conclude that the earnings management model we use in this study is capable of predicting opportunistic discretionary accruals.     

Predictive versus opportunistic earnings management,executive compensation,and firm performance

We examine the association between earnings management and an important component of corporate governance, the incentives provided through compensation. We argue that firms with predictive (opportunistic) earnings management, in which discretionary accruals do (do not) relate to future cash flows, provide a more (less) ideal setting for the use of compensation as incentives. Our empirical tests show that CEO compensation levels (measured by salary, bonus, and other forms of compensation) are positively related to predictive earnings management and negatively related to opportunistic earnings management. We also find that predictive earnings management is positively associated with future returns, whereas opportunistic earnings management is negatively associated with future returns. Overall, our results suggest that firms provide more incentives if their earnings are also more informative because of discretionary accruals.     

Discretionary-accruals models and audit qualifications

The primary goal of this study is to evaluate the ability of the Cross-sectional Jones Model and the Cross-sectional Modified Jones Model to detect earnings management vis-à-vis their time-series counterparts by examining the association between discretionary accruals and audit qualifications. These two cross-sectional models have not been formally evaluated by prior research, and their use may offer certain advantages to investors and researchers over their time-series counterparts. A sample of 173 distinct firms with qualified audit reports and a matched-pair control sample with clean audit reports are used. Only the two cross-sectional models are consistently able to detect earnings management. One limitation of this study is that its findings merely indicate the superiority of the cross-sectional models vis-à-vis their time-series counterparts in an audit qualification setting, not validate either the former or the latter.     

Using accounting information for consumption planning and equity valuation

This article develops a consumption-based valuation model that treats earnings and cash flow as complementary information sources. The model integrates three ideas that do not appear in traditional valuation models: (i) earnings provide information about future shocks to cash flow; (ii) earnings contain indiscernible transient accruals; and (iii) investors use cash flow and earnings to make allocation and consumption decisions and set price. Accordingly, the quality of earnings affects production and consumption as well as price. Among other implications, the model reveals that a valuation coefficient is not just a capitalization factor; it is the product of a capitalization factor and a structural factor reflecting earnings quality and accounting bias.     

Earnings Management in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

We study the impact of earnings management prior to bankruptcy filing on the passage of firms through Chapter 11. Using data on public US firms, we construct three measures of earnings management: a real activities manipulation measure (abnormal operating cash flows) and two accounting manipulation measures (discretionary accruals and abnormal working capital accruals). We find that, controlling for the impact of factors known to influence earnings management and firm survival in bankruptcy, earnings management prior to bankruptcy significantly reduces the likelihood of Chapter 11 plan confirmation and emergence from Chapter 11. The results are driven primarily by extreme values of earnings management, characterized by one or two standard deviations above or below the mean. The findings are consistent with creditors reacting positively to unduly conservative earnings reports and negatively to overly optimistic earnings reports. We also find that the presence of a Big 4 auditor is associated with a higher incidence of confirmation and switching to a Big 4 auditor before filing increases the incidence of emergence.     

Accruals, Cash Flows and the Post‐Earnings‐Announcement Drift

Abstract:   Several prior studies have shown that cash flows have significantly greater impact on stock prices than accruals. We examine the implications of these findings for the post‐earnings‐announcement‐drift anomaly. We argue that, if investors under‐react to earnings news, then the larger price impact of cash flows causes the cash flow component of earnings news to predict future returns better than the accruals component. Consistent with this argument, we show that unexpected cash flows are more positively related to future returns, than are unexpected accruals. Also, unexpected cash flows are found to predict future returns above and beyond that predicted by earnings surprises. Finally, we show that a strategy that decomposes earnings news into its components significantly outperforms strategies based on earnings news alone. The results support under‐reaction explanations for the drift.     

Errors in Estimating Accruals: Implications for Empirical Research

This paper examines the impact of measuring accruals as the change in successive balance sheet accounts, as opposed to measuring accruals directly from the statement of cash flows. Our primary finding is that studies using a balance sheet approach to test for earnings management are potentially contaminated by measurement error in accruals estimates. In particular, if the partitioning variable used to indicate the presence of earnings management is correlated with the occurrence of mergers and acquisitions or discontinued operations, tests are biased and researchers are likely to erroneously conclude that earnings management exists when there is none. Additional results show that the errors in balance sheet accruals estimation can confound returns regressions where discretionary and non-discretionary accruals are used as explanatory variables. Moreover, we demonstrate that tests of market mispricing of accruals will be understated due to erroneous classification of "extreme" accruals firms.     

The nature of information in accruals and cash flows in an emerging capital market: The case of China

Our study investigates the relative and incremental information content of earnings, operating cash flows, and accruals in the emerging capital market of China. The issue is tested by regressing stock returns on the levels of earnings and their components. Based on a sample of 1516 firm-years for listed Chinese firms during 1995–1998, our results demonstrate that earnings have relative information content over operating cash flows. The autocorrelations and cross-sectional correlations also imply that earnings have greater persistence and predictability than operating cash flows. We also find that discretionary accruals provide incremental information beyond that contained in nondiscretionary accruals, consistent with the argument that discretionary accruals improve the relevance of earnings in reflecting the fundamental values of the listed Chinese firms. Unlike prior findings in the studies on developed markets, we find no strong evidence that the value attached to discretionary accruals is lower than the value attached to nondiscretionary accruals. This is consistent with the argument that managerial policy choices available for the listed Chinese firms were rather limited during our sample period under relatively uniform People's Republic of China Accounting Standards (PRC-GAAP), thus, producing fewer opportunities for earnings management. An alternative interpretation could be that Chinese investors are functionally fixated on earnings.     

Auditor quality effects on the relationship between accruals,cash flows and equity returns: a variance decomposition analysis

In this paper, we examine the relative importance of the cash flow and accruals components of earnings in explaining the variation in UK company equity returns, together with the extent to which these relationships vary by auditor quality. We use a multivariate time-series approach that can be reconciled to a log-linear theoretical valuation model and, unlike the standard linear regression of returns on earnings components, accommodates time-varying discount rates. Based on a decomposition of the variance of equity returns, cash flows and accruals, our results indicate that both cash flow news and accruals news are important drivers of UK equity returns, although cash flows are more influential than accruals. We also find that variation in both earnings components has a more significant effect on returns for clients of large auditors. Finally, our results provide mixed evidence on the question of whether the impact of auditor quality is highest for the accruals component of earnings.     

Explaining the accrual anomaly by market expectations of future returns and earnings

This study examines the accrual anomaly under the framework of the Campbell [Campbell, J.Y. (1991). A variance decomposition for stock returns. Economic Journal 101 (405), 157-179.] model. The Campbell (1991) model shows that realized asset returns are a joint function of 1) expected returns, 2) revisions in market expected future returns (i.e., return news), and 3) revisions in market expected future cash flows (i.e., cash flow news). The current study adopts the Easton [Easton, P. (2004). PE ratios, PEG ratios, and estimating the implied expected rate of return on equity capital. The Accounting Review 79 (1), 73-96.] model to estimate proxies for expected returns, return news, and cash flow news. The results show that firms with low accruals have lower expected returns than firms with high accruals, which is contradictory to prior research that argues that firms with low accruals are more risky. However, investors underestimate (overestimate) future earnings growth, a proxy for cash flow growth, for low (high) accrual firms. Further analysis demonstrates that earnings news (proxy for cash flow news) plays a major role in explaining abnormal returns associated with the accrual anomaly.