This study examines the relationship between institutional pressures to provide social benefits and the discretionary accrual behavior of nonprofit firms. I examine this issue within the context of US nonprofit hospitals, an economically significant and politically rich setting where firms face...

There is hardly any evidence on earnings properties of co-operatives for which profit maximisation is not a primary goal. We find that cooperatives in Germany exhibit higher levels of timely loss recognition when they have more members(owners), when they pursue charitable objectives, and when...

We explore whether NHS hospitals managed their earnings upward before applying for Foundation Trust (FT) status, a scheme that allowed them greater financial freedom and management autonomy, in order to present an overly positive picture and increase their chances for a successful application....

This paper examines the role of overbilling in hospitals' earnings management choices. Overbilling by hospitals is a form of revenue manipulation that involves misclassifying a patient into a diagnosis-related group that yields higher reimbursement. As overbilling allows hospitals to increase...

Prior literature shows that choices regarding board composition are associated with earnings management. We add to this literature by examining the effects of the presence of a foreign board member on earnings management. Using a sample of 3,249 firm-year observations representing 586...

Ideally, firms should discontinue projects that become unprofitable. Managers, however, continue to operate such projects because of their limited employment horizons and empire-building motivations (Jensen, 1986; Ball, 2001). Prior studies suggest that timely loss recognition in accounting earnings...

Unlike previous studies that focus on accrual-based earnings management, this study analyzes real activities manipulation and investigates whether female directors on boards of directors (BoDs) affect managers’ real activities manipulation. Using a large sample of 11,831 firm-year observations...

We analyse to what extent the accrual anomaly is related to the choice of the accounting system as well as firm-level heterogeneity in corporate governance mechanisms. Using a unique dataset of listed German firms over the period 1995 to 2005 we first corroborate former results indicating that...

A detailed analysis of firms subject to SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) in the 1990s and 2000s suggests that approximately one-quarter are the result of an act that is consistent with legal standards of intent. In the remaining three quarters, the initial misstatement...