This study investigates whether managerial ownership related agency costs are associated with the demand for audit quality in a sample of small private firms. The literature on audit quality suggests that firms with high agency costs are more likely to demand audit quality. Our database enables...

The aim of this study is to investigate whether reporting based on conditional conservatism differs in high versus low tax alignment countries in a sample of medium and large-sized private firms from 13 European countries. The results suggest that reporting conservatism is more likely to occur...

"This paper examines trade credit policies of small firms operating in a bank-dominated environment (Finland). We find that creditworthiness and access to capital markets are important determinants of trade credit extended by sellers. The level of purchases is positively correlated with the...

Finnish firms are known to manage earnings downwards to avoid income taxes. This study suggests that they simultaneously manage earnings upwards in a smaller scale. The idea behind this behaviour is that humans may perceive a profit of, say, 301 million as abnormally larger than a profit of 298...

This paper investigates whether there are differences in cosmetic earnings management between firms audited by male vs. female auditors in a sample of private Finnish firms. We find that earnings cosmetics is more likely to appear in firms audited by male auditors. Our results also indicate that...

This study examines the use and determinants of covenants in Finnish small firms' loans. The results show that 72 of the 642 loan contracts examined include at least one covenant. Negative covenants are more common than affirmative covenants in our sample. We use loan characteristics, firm...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not auditor gender has an impact on the magnitude of corporate earnings management in small‐ and medium‐sized private Finnish firms. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the association between auditor gender...