A key objective of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA) was the restoration of public confidence in the integrity of audited financial statements. One section of SOA (Section 302) requires the chief executive officer(s) and the principal financial officer(s) to certify in each quarterly or annual report...

This study examines whether audit committee and board characteristics are related to earnings management by the firm. A negative relation is found between audit committee independence and abnormal accruals. A negative relation is also found between board independence and abnormal accruals....

Earnings management is a key issue for financial reporting. The purpose of this paper is to derive a set of indices to measure the pervasiveness of earnings management (PEM) using the properties of quarterly accrual volatility. The PEM index can be viewed as a quality measure of financial...

This paper addresses the question whether adoption of IFRS-standards is associated with lower earnings management. Ball et al. (2003) argue that adopting high-quality standards might be a necessary condition for high quality information, but not necessarily a sufficient one. In Germany, a...

Corporate governance literature advances the idea that certain aspects of board of directors' structure improve monitoring of managerial decisions. Among these is the managers' decision to manage earnings. Prior studies have shown that earnings management, in widely-held public companies, is...

We examine the relationship between equity incentives and earnings management in the banking industry. By focusing on this regulated industry and using industry-specific earnings management proxies, we provide evidence on the impact of regulation on earnings management arising from CEOs' equity...

Financial misrepresentation has usually been analysed by large-scale empirical research. However the generality gained from such an approach is at the cost of understanding the rich and complex nature of financial misrepresentation in real organizations. We adopt a case study approach to gain...

Objective - The purpose of this research is to obtain empirical research on the effect of corporate governance on earnings management in distressed and non-distressed companies. Corporate governance in this research is measured by independent board, audit committee, board of commissioners,...

Using a unique database of monthly advertising spending in media outlets, we examine whether managers engage in real earnings management to meet quarterly financial reporting benchmarks. We extend prior literature by: (1) separately analyzing advertising activities, allowing us to explore novel...

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...