This paper discusses the sign of the expected measurement error in discretionary accruals (DAC) estimates when accrual models do not control for the asymmetric treatment of gains and losses underlying conservatism. I find that DAC in firms with “bad news” are expected to be understated...

In this paper we analyze firms’ earnings management behavior to avoid losses conditional on the (asymmetric) incentive underlying market (positive/negative) returns. Our intuition is that firms with negative returns in the period (bad news, BN) face a higher incentive to undertake earnings...

The asymmetric recognition of gains and losses underlying conservative accounting is not taken into account by Jones (1991)-type accrual models. Recently, Moreira (2002) and Ball and Shivakumar (2005a) have proposed piecewise linear accrual models designed to control for this asymmetric impact....

In this paper I test two intuitions. First, that small private firms have incentives to undertake earnings management. Second, that firms’ financing needs are one of such incentives, constraining the sense of the income manipulation. The tax incentive is deemed to motivate firms into adopting...

In this paper, by using a database of Portuguese and Brazilian firms, where the Latin Corporate Governance Model is traditionally predominant but increasingly out of fashion, we investigate whether the Latin Corporate Governance Model performs worse or better than others (variants of the...