Accounting is imperfect, leading to errors in financial reporting. This paper links accounting errors to firms' incentives to bias reported earnings. We hypothesize that while errors discourage reporting bias by lowering earnings' value relevance, they also incentivize bias by providing...

Errors and bias are both inherent features of accounting. In theory, while errors discourage bias by lowering the value relevance of accounting, they can also facilitate bias by providing camouflage. Consistent with theory, we find a hump-shaped relation between a firm's propensity to engage in...

The history of the People's Republic of China can be classified into two distinctive periods: Mao's China (1949-1978) and Deng's China (from 1979 to the present). Each period contains a number of sub-periods or phases, and each phase is characterised by one or more major political or economic...