The purpose of our research is to determine the likelihood of financial statement manipulations in companies throughout a variety of emerging market countries and compare this potential to that of firms within the United States. We do this by utilizing the Fraud Score Model as set forth by...

Using a sample of 185 Chinese IPO firms listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange during the period 1999 to 2001, we show that related party (RP) sales of goods and services could be used opportunistically to manage earnings upwards in the pre-IPO period. We also provide evidence that such behavior...

This study explores the market response to achieving analyst earnings expectations, distinguishing between expectations achieved through earnings forecast guidance and earnings management. We consider three earnings management tools: real earnings management, working capital accruals management,...

This study analyzes determinants and effects of differences between Domestic Accounting Standards (DAS) and International Accounting Standards (IAS). We use an extensive list of differences between DAS and IAS to create two indices, absence and divergence. Absence measures the extent to which...

Local governments on the municipal level were among the first organizations to take part in the accounting reform in Greece that sought the transformation of the traditional budgetary cash accounting system to a new system that combines cash and accrual accounting information. In this paper we...

We compare US firms' earnings with reconciled earnings for cross listed non-US firms. Non-US firms' earnings exhibit more evidence of smoothing, greater tendency to manage towards a target, lower association with share price and less timely recognition of losses. Firms from countries with weaker...

Using a sample of 500 large companies over a two-year period, we examine the impact of board characteristics on opportunistic earnings management in India, a large emerging economy. In addition to board independence, we analyze how characteristics that proxy for the 'quality' of inside and...

The financial crisis that occurred in Malaysia in the last decade followed by a series of corporate restructuring exercises trigger some firms to write off assets value. The incentives to write off may come from signalling future distress, current restructuring exercises, or taking the...

This paper examines how capital market pressures and institutional factors shape firms' incentives to report earnings that reflect economic performance. To isolate the effects of reporting incentives, we exploit the fact that, within the European Union, privately held corporations face the same...

This paper investigates the development of earnings quality for a sample of 5,817 firm years during the period between 1997 and 2006 using seven different measures (accounting- and market-based). As a result, overall earnings quality of German firms improves over time. However, the measures of...