Content uploaded by Sean W.G. Robb
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Sean W.G. Robb on Dec 17, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Earnings Management: The Effect of Ex Ante Earnings Expectations
Abstract and Figures
SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt has recently expressed concerns about the use of earnings management to meet Wall Street earnings expectations set by analysts' forecasts. We investigate whether managers aim to "meet or beat" analysts' forecasts and examine the influence of analysts' forecast dispersion on this aim. Our results are consistent with managers aligning earnings with market expectations established by analysts' forecasts. Additionally, our evidence is consistent with managers behaving as though they have greater incentives to increase income in settings where the dispersion in analysts' forecasts is low.
Figures - uploaded by Sean W.G. Robb
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Sean W.G. Robb
Content may be subject to copyright.
... Furthermore, by doing their own direct surveillance, institutional investors may bolster their oversight and administration of a company by increasing the amount of attention they pay to the board of directors. Institutional investors are able to optimize their returns on investment by ensuring that the management team is being monitored to ensure that they are doing their fiduciary obligations (Payne & Robb, 2000). In their survey article, (Beneish, 2001) give evidence for this by revealing that 45% of the investors who are institutional approach the board of directors for confidential talks away from the oversight of management. ...
Using a sample covering practically all dividend-paying oil and gas companies companies in Pakistan during 2011-2020, we document that earnings management in these companies is driven by two concurrent forces: the willingness to pay (tax-exempt) dividends and avoiding unnecessary company income tax. Moreover, we show that the need for income increasing earnings management enabling current dividend distribution is mitigated by the amount of retained earnings from prior years. This article adds to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence for dividend and tax-driven earnings management in private oil and gas companies facing neither political pressures nor capital market incentives for earnings disclosures.
... It is also documented that small positive earnings surprises are more common than small negative earnings surprises and that a zero earnings surprise is relatively high in earnings surprise distribution (Dreman & Barry, 1995;Brown, 1997). It is more likely that firms engage in earnings manipulation when reporting earnings that meet or beat analysts' earnings forecasts (Matsumoto, 2002;Payne & Robb, 2000). ...
This study investigates whether corporate governance can mitigate real earnings management. Specifically, this study investigates the role of the board and institutional owners to mitigate real earnings management. In recent years, firms have been switching from accrual-based earnings management to real earnings management, and the incidence of real earnings management has increased. The role of corporate governance to reduce accrual-based earnings management is well documented in the literature; however, there is no firm evidence regarding the role of corporate governance to constrain real earnings management. In order to fill the gap in the literature, this paper examines whether corporate governance, specifically the board of directors and institutional investors, play any role to reduce real earnings management. In this study, I find the evidence that firms engage in real earnings management either to avoid reporting losses or to meet analysts' forecasts. The cross-sectional analysis reveals that these activities are less prevalent for the firms that have larger institutional investors; however, no evidence regarding the role of the board to prevent real earnings management is indicated.
Research commonly assumes that performance gap relative to aspirations (manifested in the difference between a firm's actual ROA and its prior ROA as a referent) exerts a similar influence on organizational change as the performance gap relative to analysts’ earnings forecasts (reflected in the difference between a firm's actual earnings and earnings forecasts as a referent). However, these distinct types of referents from different sources are conceptually unique and operate differently, which could give rise to dissimilar behaviours. Because corporate performance information can emanate internally from agency‐driven firms and externally from financial analysts, we examine both in a unified framework. To facilitate a deeper understanding of these relationships, we investigate how alternate income streams from business unit (BU) performance at a lower level in the organizational structure moderate the way corporate managers remedy corporate performance shortfalls at a higher level. Our study contributes to the behavioural theory by examining distinct influences of corporate performance goals derived from internally‐ versus externally imposed referents and their interactions with BU performance on new market entry activities. Empirical evidence from a sample of multiunit firms publicly listed in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector over the period 1998–2016 supported the hypotheses.
The existing studies on the relationship between ESG and earnings management provide mixed evidence and ignore ESG rating divergence. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2021, we examine the effect of ESG performance on earnings management under different levels of ESG rating divergence. The results reveal a negative association between ESG performance and earnings management. Meanwhile, among firms with high (low) ESG rating divergence, our results show that the degree of earnings management rises (falls) when the firms engage in ESG practices. Our findings are robust to alternative variable definitions and the Heckman two‐stage selection model. In addition, we exclude alternative explanations and consider the effect of greenwashing. Cross‐sectional analyses show that the moderating effect of ESG rating divergence is significant only among firms with greater CEO power and higher agency costs, suggesting that agency problems are the mechanism by which ESG rating divergence positively moderates the relationship between ESG performance and earnings management. This study advances the existing research on ESG and earnings quality by presenting new empirical evidence and revisits ESG rating divergence through the lens of agency theory, revealing that management could use ESG for opportunistic behavior in the presence of ESG rating divergence. Our study shows that the divergence in ESG ratings can affect the economic consequences of firms' ESG practices, offering insights for future research on ESG and ESG rating divergence and for regulators to improve the regulation of ESG disclosure and rating.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of firm-specific investor sentiment on Brazilian companies’ accrual-based earnings management between 2010 and 2018. The paper aims to bring deeper insight into the relationship between the investor expectations and managers’ decision-making in an emerging market.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use the quantitative approach and apply a multiple linear regression model to test the relationship among the abnormal accruals, the firm-specific investor sentiment index and the control variables. The final sample includes data from 175 companies, between 2010 and 2018.
Findings
These results reveal a negative association between firm-specific investor sentiment and accrual-based earnings management, which could mean that the risk propensity of managers to manipulate earnings increases when they face known losses in the capital market.
Research limitations/implications
The research findings provide a valuable understanding of how emerging capital market expectations can influence managerial decisions, such as accrual-based earnings management. The geographical area of study was limited to only Brazil.
Originality/value
Previous studies on developed markets show that market-wide investor sentiment positively influences accrual-based earnings management. However, the present study shows that the firm-specific investor sentiment index has a significant and negative relationship with Brazilian companies’ earnings manipulation, whereas market sentiment indicates contradictory relationship in previous studies in the country.
We examine differences in CEOs’ achievement of earnings per share (EPS) targets related to (1) analysts’ forecasts and (2) internal cash bonus payouts. Our focus on firms with different benchmarks for the same performance metric enables us to assess the relative importance of the incentives that each EPS target provides based on its revealed achievement. Most CEOs meet analysts’ final consensus EPS forecasts but are unlikely to meet bonus EPS targets that exceed forecasted EPS. Nearly all CEOs receive some EPS-based cash bonus, even when missing the forecast. Moreover, CEOs with bonus targets that are easier to achieve than the consensus forecast tend to receive more annual pay, suggesting that boards often set more achievable EPS targets to provide extra compensation to CEOs while maintaining the appearance of pay-for-performance. Our results highlight the importance of considering both types of EPS targets simultaneously when assessing their respective incentive properties.
Purpose
This study examines a link between firms' product market power, industry concentration, the degree of earnings management and the role of governance in curbing earnings management.
Design/methodology/approach
The author uses different panel techniques of feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) and system generalized method of moments (GMM) to show robust study findings.
Findings
The study results reveal that firms lacking product market pricing power engage in earnings management, adding a new dimension to the existing literature. These findings mirror even at the industry level, where the authors document immense competitiveness led to earnings manipulation and stringent corporate governance mechanism has the potency to curb earnings management.
Practical implications
The paper has valuable insights and practical implications for policymakers and market participants. The results indicate robust institutional oversight mechanisms can deter earnings management in a concentrated market.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first paper from India, a growing emerging economy, to look at the various aspects of market characteristics, earnings management and the role of corporate governance.
This study examines the analysts’ intentions on predicting the earnings forecasts, whether analysts predict managed or unmanaged earnings or in other words, predict accurate forecast or optimist/pessimist forecasts. This study introduces ex-post forecasts as the better proxy to explain analysts’ intentions on earnings forecasts. The important contribution to this line of research is the use of ex-post forecasts in a comparative study of ex-ante and ex-post forecasts. This study covers 3,294 US firm-year observations from 2006 to 2018 and uses various empirical analyses including system GMM to eliminate endogenous effects. Our results suggest that analysts predict the managed earnings to be accurate and to minimize earnings surprises. Results also suggest brokers’ actual estimates closely reflect managed earnings and forecast errors from managed earnings are distributed closer to zero than forecast errors from unmanaged earnings. This study provides value to investors in making investment decisions and for policymakers to provide stringent standards to minimize earnings management and any inside trading.
Pownall et al. (1993) document that nearly 80 percent of their sample of voluntary management earnings forecasts are not precise point forecasts. Imprecise forecast forms include closed-interval forecasts (i.e., ranges), open-interval forecasts (i.e., minimums and maximums), and general impressions about firms' earnings prospects. We perform cross-sectional logistic regressions to document determinants of forecast precision. Our sample consists of 1,212 annual and interim management forecasts. After controlling for firm-specific and horizon-specific earnings uncertainty, we find that managers produce more precise forecasts of annual earnings for firms with greater analyst following (our proxy for private information) and for smaller firms (our proxy for public information). The results are robust across subsamples. The majority of the results, however, do not hold for interim forecasts.
This study provides empirical evidence regarding the effect of annual accounting earnings announcements on investors' trading behavior. We find that the magnitude of trading volume reaction is an increasing function of both the magnitude of the associated price reaction and the level of predisclosure information asymmetry. These results are consistent with Kim and Verrecchia's (1991a) theoretical trading volume proposition.
This book reviews the theory and methodology underlying the economics-based empirical literature in accounting. An accounting theory theory is an explanation for observed accounting and auditing practices. Such an explanation is necessary for interpretation of empirical associations between variables. The book discusses the role of theory in empirical work. It then reviews accounting theories involved in empirical studies of the use of accounting in capital markets, contracting and the political process and the extent to which the theories are consistent with those studies' evidence. Empirical studies in auditing are also reviewed. The book finishes with a discussion of the role of accounting research and a summary and evaluation of the research up until the mid-1980s.
