IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v25y2018icp62-68.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Refinancing pressure and earnings management: Evidence from changes in short-term debt and discretionary accruals

Author

Listed:
  • Fields, L. Paige
  • Gupta, Manu
  • Wilkins, Mike
  • Zhang, Shage

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate whether refinancing pressure leads managers to manipulate earnings. Our tests examine the relation between changes in short-term debt and discretionary accruals. We find that firms have higher discretionary accruals during periods of increasing short-term debt. We also find that this relationship is stronger for firms that ultimately obtain new loan financing. Finally, we show that the presence of investment grade debt attenuates the relationship between discretionary accruals and refinancing pressure.

Suggested Citation

  • Fields, L. Paige & Gupta, Manu & Wilkins, Mike & Zhang, Shage, 2018. "Refinancing pressure and earnings management: Evidence from changes in short-term debt and discretionary accruals," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 62-68.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:25:y:2018:i:c:p:62-68
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2017.10.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612317304476
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2017.10.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yixin Liu & Yixi Ning & Wallace N. Davidson III, 2010. "Earnings Management Surrounding New Debt Issues," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 659-681, August.
    2. Douglas W. Diamond, 2004. "Presidential Address, Committing to Commit: Short-term Debt When Enforcement Is Costly," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1447-1479, August.
    3. Flannery, Mark J, 1986. "Asymmetric Information and Risky Debt Maturity Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 19-37, March.
    4. Demirtas, K. Ozgur & Rodgers Cornaggia, Kimberly, 2013. "Initial credit ratings and earnings management," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 135-145.
    5. Ali, Ashiq & Zhang, Weining, 2015. "CEO tenure and earnings management," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 60-79.
    6. Roberts, Michael R. & Sufi, Amir, 2009. "Renegotiation of financial contracts: Evidence from private credit agreements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 159-184, August.
    7. Almeida, Heitor & Campello, Murillo & Laranjeira, Bruno & Weisbenner, Scott, 2012. "Corporate Debt Maturity and the Real Effects of the 2007 Credit Crisis," Critical Finance Review, now publishers, vol. 1(1), pages 3-58, January.
    8. Hayne E. Leland, 1998. "Agency Costs, Risk Management, and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(4), pages 1213-1243, August.
    9. Kim, Yongtae & Park, Myung Seok, 2005. "Pricing of Seasoned Equity Offers and Earnings Management," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 435-463, June.
    10. Kothari, S.P. & Leone, Andrew J. & Wasley, Charles E., 2005. "Performance matched discretionary accrual measures," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 163-197, February.
    11. Cohen, Daniel A. & Zarowin, Paul, 2010. "Accrual-based and real earnings management activities around seasoned equity offerings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 2-19, May.
    12. Connie L. Becker & Mark L. Defond & James Jiambalvo & K.R. Subramanyam, 1998. "The Effect of Audit Quality on Earnings Management," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(1), pages 1-24, March.
    13. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1991. "The Theory of Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 297-355, March.
    14. Douglas W. Diamond, 1991. "Debt Maturity Structure and Liquidity Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(3), pages 709-737.
    15. Teoh, Siew Hong & Welch, Ivo & Wong, T. J., 1998. "Earnings management and the underperformance of seasoned equity offerings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 63-99, October.
    16. Givoly, Dan & Hayn, Carla, 2000. "The changing time-series properties of earnings, cash flows and accruals: Has financial reporting become more conservative?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 287-320, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Florian Kiy & Theresa Zick, 2020. "Effects of declining bank health on borrowers’ earnings quality: evidence from the European sovereign debt crisis," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 90(4), pages 615-673, May.
    2. Ammar Hussain & Minhas Akbar & Muhammad Kaleem Khan & Ahsan Akbar & Mirela Panait & Marian Catalin Voica, 2020. "When Does Earnings Management Matter? Evidence across the Corporate Life Cycle for Non-Financial Chinese Listed Companies," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-19, December.
    3. Ammar Hussain & Minhas Akbar & Muhmmad Kaleem Khan & Marcela Sokolová & Ahsan Akbar, 2022. "The Interplay of Leverage, Financing Constraints and Real Earnings Management: A Panel Data Approach," Risks, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-21, May.
    4. Kim, Young Sang & Kim, Yura & Yi, Ha-Chin, 2021. "Vice or virtue? The impact of earnings management on bank loan agreements," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 303-324.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Frerich Buchholz & Kerstin Lopatta & Karen Maas, 2020. "The Deliberate Engagement of Narcissistic CEOs in Earnings Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 167(4), pages 663-686, December.
    2. Ben-Nasr, Hamdi & Boubaker, Sabri & Rouatbi, Wael, 2015. "Ownership structure, control contestability, and corporate debt maturity," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 265-285.
    3. Krishnan, Gopal V. & Zhang, Jing, 2022. "Principles-based standards and conditional accounting conservatism," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    4. Mian, Atif & Santos, João A.C., 2018. "Liquidity risk and maturity management over the credit cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(2), pages 264-284.
    5. El Diri, Malek & Lambrinoudakis, Costas & Alhadab, Mohammad, 2020. "Corporate governance and earnings management in concentrated markets," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 291-306.
    6. Fung, Simon Y.K. & Goodwin, John, 2013. "Short-term debt maturity, monitoring and accruals-based earnings management," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 67-82.
    7. Sha, Yezhou & Qiao, Lu & Li, Suyang & Bu, Ziwen, 2021. "Political freedom and earnings management," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    8. Lin, Yi-Mien & Shen, Cheng-An, 2015. "Family firms' credit rating, idiosyncratic risk, and earnings management," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 872-877.
    9. Haga, Jesper & Ittonen, Kim & Tronnes, Per C. & Wong, Leon, 2018. "Is earnings management sensitive to discount rates?," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 75-88.
    10. Florackis, Chris & Sainani, Sushil, 2021. "Can CFOs resist undue pressure from CEOs to manage earnings?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    11. Nguyen Thi Hoa Hong & Nguyen Thai Anh & Nguyen Tran Viet Hoang & Do Nhat Minh, 2023. "Corporate governance, external financing, and earnings management: new evidence from an emerging market," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 1-22, December.
    12. Srinidhi, Bin & Liao, Qunfeng, 2020. "Family firms and crash risk: Alignment and entrenchment effects," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    13. Filip, Andrei & Huang, Zhongwei & Lui, Daphne, 2020. "Cross-listing and corporate malfeasance: Evidence from P-chip firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    14. Uday Chandra & Nandkumar (Nandu) Nayar, 2008. "The Information Content of Private Debt Placements," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(9-10), pages 1164-1195.
    15. Deng, Kebin & Hu, Fang & Tian, Gary Gang & Zhong, Ziying, 2022. "Does the disclosure of internal control deficiency matter for accrual quality? Evidence from China," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    16. Wang, Teng-Shih & Lin, Yi-Mien & Werner, Edward M. & Chang, Hsihui, 2018. "The relationship between external financing activities and earnings management: Evidence from enterprise risk management," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 312-329.
    17. Kim, Sang-Joon & Bae, John & Oh, Hannah, 2019. "Financing strategically: The moderation effect of marketing activities on the bifurcated relationship between debt level and firm valuation of small and medium enterprises," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 663-681.
    18. Özgür, Arslan-Ayaydin & Thewissen, James & Torsin, Wouter, 2021. "Earnings Management Methods and CEO Political Affiliation," LIDAM Discussion Papers LFIN 2021017, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain Finance (LFIN).
    19. Campa, Domenico & Camacho-Miñano, María-del-Mar, 2015. "The impact of SME’s pre-bankruptcy financial distress on earnings management tools," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 222-234.
    20. Nguyen Thi Thanh Phuong & Dang Ngoc Hung & Vu Thi Thuy Van & Ngo Thanh Xuan, 2020. "Effect of Debt Structure on Earnings Quality of Energy Businesses in Vietnam," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 10(3), pages 396-401.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:25:y:2018:i:c:p:62-68. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.