Not surprisingly, the recent accounting scandals look different when viewed from the perspectives of the political/regulatory process and of the market for corporate governance and financial reporting. We do not have the opportunity to observe a world in which either market or...

We examine the association between board independence and the characteristics of non-GAAP earnings. Our results suggest that companies with less independent boards are more likely to opportunistically exclude recurring items from non-GAAP earnings. Specifically, we find that exclusions from...

We study the effect of mandatory IFRS adoption in Europe in 2005 on conditional conservatism. We capture conditional conservatism with a modified version of the Khan and Watts (2009) measure (C_Score) that also controls for potential shifts in unconditional conservatism and cost of capital. From...

Using a sample of group affiliated and standalone firms for the years 2001-06 from India, a large emerging economy dominated by family business groups and firms with concentrated ownership, we examine the relationship between insider control and opportunistic earnings management with specific...

Using a large sample of multinational corporations (MNCs), we examine the location of earnings management within the firm. We posit and find that MNCs manage their consolidated earnings through an orchestrated reporting strategy across subsidiaries over which they exert significant influence....

We investigate earnings management of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) being a block trade target in China. Some block trades transfer control rights of SOEs to private parties (STP transactions) while others sell shares to another SOE (STS transactions). We find that SOEs manage earnings more...

We examine whether firms with managers that have prior internal audit experience are less likely to manage earnings. We find that firms with managers that have internal audit experience are associated with less overall earnings management, driven by lower real earnings management. Importantly,...

This paper examines whether dividend policy is associated with earnings management and whether the relationship varies across countries with wide-ranging degrees of institutional strength and transparency. Based on a sample of 23,429 corporations from 29 countries, we show that dividend payers...

This paper examines the differences in accrual-based and real earnings management across countries from the perspective of investor protection. Following prior research (Leuz et al., 2003), we hypothesize that accrual-based earnings management is more constrained by strict discipline in...

Using economic deregulation as a quasi-natural experiment for increasing product market competition, we find increases in earnings manipulation and accounting frauds following deregulation. This “dark-side” of product market competition is particularly evident for deregulated firms in high...