To be useful for decision-making accounting information needs to be of high quality. This article examines how tax accounting rules may impact the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in financial statements. The simulation model reveals that significant distortions occur in...

Financial statements represent an instrument by which relevant information about a company is passed on to its users. Based on the information presented in the financial statements, i.e. information on the financial position and performance of the company, and generated cash flows and capital,...

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...

We analyse in detail conservative accounting practices in seventeen European countries, taking into account institutional factors. In addition, we examine the impact of IFRS adoption and the influence of changes in economic conditions on conditional conservatism. Specifically, we study the level...

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...

In this study, we document that independent corporate boards of Hong Kong firms provide effective monitoring of earnings management, which suggests that despite differences in institutional environments, corporate board independence is important to ensure high quality financial reporting. The...

Corporate governance literature advances the idea that certain aspects of board of directors' structure improve monitoring of managerial decisions. Among these is the managers' decision to manage earnings. Prior studies have shown that earnings management, in widely-held public companies, is...

Academic research on loan loss provisioning and the earlier incurred credit losses (ICL) model has a long tradition in the literature. Academic criticism of the ICL was taken up by the Financial Stability Board after the financial crisis of 2018, leading to a fundamental revision of accounting...

Recently, South Africa has suffered from several large financial statement frauds. To assist stakeholders in identifying fraud, this study investigated the ability of the Beneish M-score and the Dechow et al. F-score to identify fraud in South Africa. The study also explored similarities in...