Earnings forecast disclosure regulation and earnings management: evidence from Taiwan IPO firms

This study examines whether the Taiwanese regulation requiring disclosure of earnings forecasts in the IPOs resulted in disclosure of more optimistic earnings forecasts and whether the forecast error was reduced more by manipulating the reported earnings rather than revising the earnings forecasts to meet the forecast error threshold. The study is based on 759 forecasts issued by the Taiwanese IPO firms from 1994 to 2001, i.e. 8-year period after the regulation was modified to increase the forecast error threshold to 20%. The findings show that the disclosure regulation resulted in more optimistic forecasts than conservative forecasts, especially for firms expecting better performance in the forecast year compared to the previous year. Firms disclosing optimistic earnings forecasts engaged more in manipulation of reported earnings than revision of forecasts to meet the forecast error threshold. These findings thus suggest that the disclosure regulation resulted in earnings manipulation, which reduced the quality of reported earnings. We received valuable comments at the 2003 American Accounting Association and 2004 Euorpean Accounting Association annual meetings. We also thank the participants at the research seminars at Rutgers University, City University of Hong Kong, and Pace University, for their insightful comments. Picheng Lee especially thanks Pace University for 2003 summer research grant.     

Employee effort and earnings management

In this study, we examine the relationship between employee effort within the firm and earnings management, using data on working hours and discretionary accruals. With higher employee effort, we find less earnings management among U.S. firms. This result is stronger when earnings are more predictable and persists after we control for endogeneity. We also find smaller earnings discontinuities with higher employee effort. Our domestic results remain the same with a global sample. Our results suggest that earnings management enables benchmark beating with greater precision than can high employee effort alone, but also that high-effort firms may be misclassified as earnings manipulators.     

Reputation management and the disclosure of earnings forecasts

In this paper, managers differ from each other in terms of the probability that they are ??forthcoming?? (and disclose all the earnings forecasts they receive) or ??strategic?? (and disclose the earnings forecasts they receive only when it is in their self-interest to do so). Strategic managers choose whether to disclose their forecasts based on both the disclosure??s effects on their firms?? stock price and on their reputation among investors for being forthcoming. Our findings include: strategic managers can build a reputation for being forthcoming by disclosing unfavorable forecasts; managers?? incentive to build a reputation for being forthcoming may be so strong that they disclose even the most negative forecasts; as managers become more concerned about their reputation: (a) the current price of the firm in the event the manager makes no forecast increases; (b) managers who have a high probability of behaving strategically (as forthcoming) in the future issue forecasts more (less) often in the present.     

CFO gender and earnings management: evidence from China

We study the effect of chief financial officer (CFO) gender on earnings management (EM) in China’s listed firms from 1999 to 2011. In the cross-sectional analysis, we find that female CFO firm-years exhibit significantly lower discretionary accruals, lower total accruals, lower abnormal production costs, and higher abnormal discretionary expenditures, than the male CFO firm-years. We further examine the relation between CFO gender and EM surrounding CFO transitions. We find that the departing male CFOs are more aggressive than the departing female CFOs in managing up earnings during their last year with the firm and the newly appointed male CFOs are more aggressive than the new female CFOs in managing down earnings during their first year on the job. The evidence surrounding CFO transitions suggests that male CFOs are more aggressive than female CFOs in manipulating earnings, either in the last attempt to save their jobs or to take bigger credit for any future performance gains. Overall, our empirical evidence suggests that female CFOs engage in less EM and are more conservative in financial reporting than their male counterparts.     

Voluntary disclosure and the cost of equity capital: Evidence from management earnings forecasts

This paper examines the directional effects of management earnings forecasts on the cost of equity capital. We find that forecasters of bad news experience a significant increase in the cost of equity capital in the month after their disclosure. Conversely, the cost of equity capital for good news forecasters does not change significantly in the same period. We also indicate that the magnitude of changes in the cost of capital for good news forecasters is significantly lower than that for bad news forecasters and non-forecasters, which suggests that investors may view good news forecasts less credible. Finally, we show that the effect of the subsequent earnings announcement on the cost of equity capital is preempted by the management forecasts for bad news firms, and that the combined effects of the management earnings forecasts and the earnings announcement are not significant for both good news and bad news forecasters. Our paper contributes to the literature by adding evidence on directional effects of voluntary disclosures and on long-term economic consequences of management earnings forecasts.     

GDP growth incentives and earnings management: evidence from China

Review of Accounting Studies - Using data from China, we examine whether and how the incentive to boost GDP growth at the government level affects earnings management at the firm level. We find...     

Central supervision and earnings management: Quasi-experimental evidence from China

Earnings management is costly to society because it decreases the informativeness of earnings and hence distorts capital market efficiency. Drawing upon a natural experiment generated by the staggered random on-site inspection programme initiated by China's central government between 2013 and 2017, this paper finds that highly intensive central supervision significantly decreases local firms' earnings management behaviours. Moreover, the effect of central supervision is found to be more pronounced in provinces with severe GDP exaggeration, provinces with local governors facing impending promotion, and firms controlled by the government. These findings suggest that on-site inspections by the central government may alleviate local officials' political incentives and ability to pressure local firms to engage in earnings management. However, the estimation results of timing tests indicate that this monitoring effect is short-lived, calling for a more comprehensive strategy to enhance the supervision of local officials and consequently improve the reliability of firms' financial reporting quality. These findings highlight the importance of addressing the agency problem between central and local governments in curbing firms' earnings manipulation to improve the capital market efficiency of economies characterized by strong government intervention.     

Executive compensation and earnings management: Empirical evidence from Japan

This study investigates the relation between discretionary accounting choices and executive compensation in Japanese firms. The results show that the use of discretionary accruals increases executive compensation. The analyses also show that firm managers receiving no bonus adopt income-decreasing accruals and extraordinary items. In particular, evidence shows that negative extraordinary items are strongly associated with no bonus payment. Finally, the research indicates that the association between discretionary accruals and executive bonus varies depending upon the circumstances of the firm. This study contributes to the literature on earnings management from an international comparative perspective since most previous studies on earnings management and executive compensation have focused on U.S. firms.     

Auditor reputation and earnings management: International evidence from the banking industry

We examine the relation between auditor reputation and earnings management in banks using a sample of banks from 29 countries. In particular, we examine the implications of two aspects of auditor reputation, auditor type and auditor industry specialization, for earnings management in banks. We find that both auditor type and auditor industry specialization moderate benchmark-beating (loss-avoidance and just-meeting-or-beating prior year’s earnings) behavior in banks. In addition, we find that once auditor type and auditor industry specialization are included in the same tests, only auditor industry specialization has a significant impact on constraining benchmark-beating behavior. In separate tests related to income-increasing abnormal loan loss provisions, we find that both auditor type and auditor expertise constrain income-increasing earnings management. Again, in joint tests, only auditor industry expertise has a significant impact on constraining income-increasing earnings management.     

Underwriter choice and earnings management: evidence from seasoned equity offerings

Using a sample of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), this paper examines the association between the choice of financial intermediary and earnings management. We contend that with more stringent standards for certification and intense monitoring, highly prestigious underwriters restrict firms’ incentives for earnings management to protect their reputation and to avoid potential litigation risks, while firms with greater incentives for earnings management avoid strict monitoring by choosing low-quality underwriters. Consistent with our predictions, we find an inverse association between underwriter quality and issuers’ earnings management. In addition, we find that underwriter quality is positively related to SEOs’ post-issue performance, even after controlling for the effect of earnings management. We also find that firms with low-underwriter prestige and high levels of earnings management under-perform the most. However, the effect of underwriter choice on post-issue performance does not last long.

Contemporaneous verification of language: evidence from management earnings forecasts

Research documents that linguistic tone is incrementally informative about stock returns. What remains a puzzle is the mechanism by which investors can assess its credibility. We examine whether contemporaneous information in management earnings forecasts serves as a timely alternative to ex post verification. We document that ex post verifiable quantitative news in unbundled forecasts, and characteristics of the linguistic tone itself, affect investors’ pricing of tone. Consistent with higher quality signals enhancing the credibility of contemporaneous lower quality signals, we find that quantitative news verifies the associated linguistic tone; when the two signals have the same sign, the price effect of tone is stronger. Furthermore, the pricing attenuation of tone is increasing in the imprecision of the quantitative forecast, suggesting that lower forecast quality compromises the quantitative signal’s credibility enhancement. Managerial incentives to inflate tone lead to the verification effect being greater for optimistic language, while management’s use of hyperbole results in attenuation of the tone’s pricing.     

Firm diversification and earnings management: evidence from seasoned equity offerings

Popular press suggests that diversified firms are more aggressive in managing earnings than non-diversified firms. We examine this claim in the seasoned equity offering (SEO) setting, where firms have been shown to have the incentive to manage earnings upwards. Using the cross-sectional modified Jones [(1991) J Accounting Res 29:193–228] model to measure discretionary current accruals, we find that discretionary current accruals are higher among diversified firms than in non-diversified ones. Our evidence is consistent with the view that the extent of firm diversification is directly related to the degree of earnings management. We further show that diversified issuers with high discretionary accruals underperformed other SEO firms.

Regulatory oversight and trade-offs in earnings management: evidence from pension accounting

Review of Accounting Studies - I develop approaches that quantify the use of discretion for the three main assumptions used for the financial reporting of defined benefit pension obligations: the...     

Bank earnings management and analyst coverage: evidence from loan loss provisions

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We investigate whether there are information transfers related to the narratives accompanying earnings announcements in the same way there are for...     

Auditor reporting and earnings management: some additional evidence

This paper investigates the reasons that lead to modification of auditors’ opinions. We revisit the conclusions of prior US‐based research on whether a modification highlights likely earnings management activities. Extending this research, we consider an alternate explanation that managers adjust accruals to report earnings that better predict future firm performance, which has the side‐effect of placing them in conflict with their auditors. Our study sample comprises all firms listed on the Australian Stock Exchange over the period 1999–2003. Consistent with prior research, there is no evidence of earnings management leading to an audit opinion modification. However, we do show that firms receiving inherent uncertainty modifications (other than going concern) have greater persistence of earnings (accruals) relative to other firms. This is consistent with the proposition that managers have made policy choices in reporting current earnings, with which their auditors disagree, that will likely result in a greater ability to forecast the firm's future earnings.     

Managerial incentives for discretionary disclosure: evidence from management leveraged buyouts

Managers in management leveraged buyout (MBO) firms prefer to purchase their firms at a low offer price. This motive gives them a clear incentive to make pessimistic discretionary disclosures. Using a sample of press releases, I find that managers involved in their firms’ MBO selectively release negative disclosures to denigrate their firm just before the MBO transaction when compared with prior period: they issue more bad news disclosures and more pessimistic quotes. Additionally, they issue less optimistic quotes, fewer good news disclosures, less positive earnings forecasts, and they manage earnings downwards. I control for factors that may not be caused by managers’ purchase motives by comparing the MBO sample with a third-party leveraged buyout sample where management is not involved in the buyout and with a performance-matched control sample. I find that the disclosure of MBO firms becomes significantly more pessimistic than the leveraged buyout firms where management is not involved in the transaction and significantly more pessimistic than the performance-matched control sample.     

Religiosity and bank earnings management: Revisiting international evidence

The modernization theory forecasts a sharp declining effect of institutionalized religion on human behavior owing to the extensive economic development. However, this prediction is rejected and proved that religious values and beliefs have a pervasive influence on individual conduct. Based on this salient evidence, we examine the influence of religious social norms on bank earnings management behavior with regard to ongoing economic development. We use 20,715 bank-year observations from 1318 listed banks of eight geographical regions. We, further, employ an updated dataset of 2007–2021 to resemble the economic prosperity time period. Our study discards the prediction of the modernization theory and reveals that banks located in countries with high religiosity are less likely to manage their reported earnings. While comparing conventional banks with Islamic ones, conventional banks are found to be less prone to the earnings management practice than that of their Islamic counterparts. We also find religiosity to have a greater magnitude of effect on the accounting manipulation in the crisis period than in the post-crisis one. The cross-regional differences in religious values bring differential effects on this unethical practice. Our results are robust with the alternative measures of earnings management and alternative model specifications.     

Firm diversification and earnings management strategies: European evidence

This paper investigates whether corporate diversification, both international and industrial, provides a favourable environment for earnings management. We find that international diversification is associated with greater manipulation of accruals and sales but with lower manipulation of production costs. Industrial diversification is associated with lower levels of all three earnings management strategies. We find strong evidence that the combination of industrial and international diversification increases real activity manipulation but has no effect on accrual manipulation. Moreover, we find that in the presence of firm complexity linked to higher levels of earnings management, the recommendations of financial analysts are more likely to be on the sell side and vice versa. Our results provide useful insights to investors by highlighting the impact of corporate diversification on earnings management and, thus, the accurate estimation of firm value.     

Internal corporate governance,CEO turnover,and earnings management

The likelihood and speed of forced CEO turnover – but not voluntary turnover – are positively related to a firm's earnings management. These patterns persist in tests that consider the effects of earnings restatements, regulatory enforcement actions, and the possible endogeneity of CEO turnover and earnings management. The relation between earnings management and forced turnover occurs both in firms with good and bad performance, and when the accruals work to inflate or deflate reported earnings. These results indicate that boards tend to act proactively to discipline managers who manage earnings aggressively, before the manipulations lead to costly external consequences.     

Management earnings forecasts and analyst forecasts:Evidence from mandatory disclosure system

Distinct from the literature on the effects that management earnings forecasts(MEFs) properties, such as point, range and qualitative estimations, have on analy...