IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/euract/v13y2004i2p235-259.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Voluntary management earnings forecasts and discretionary accruals: evidence from Danish IPOs

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey Gramlich
  • Ole Sørensen

Abstract

This paper seeks to determine whether Danish managers exercise discretionary accruals to reach earnings forecast targets they voluntarily specify in conjunction with initial public offerings (IPOs). Because the Danish accounting and legal environment is more permissive than the US, we use Denmark as a natural laboratory for learning how business would occur without strict rules, enforcement and sanctions. Danish managers often volunteer pro forma financial statements for results that are expected to occur subsequent to the IPO. We examine a sample of 58 Danish firms that issue voluntary management earnings forecasts in connection with IPOs that occur between 1984 and 1996. The evidence we uncover strongly suggests that pre-managed earnings are adjusted toward these targets. In contrast with Kasznik's (1999) results related to voluntarily forecasting American firms, managers of Danish firms exercise discretionary accruals to mitigate earnings forecast errors regardless of whether pre-managed earnings are less, or greater, than the IPO forecast amount.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey Gramlich & Ole Sørensen, 2004. "Voluntary management earnings forecasts and discretionary accruals: evidence from Danish IPOs," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 235-259.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:13:y:2004:i:2:p:235-259
    DOI: 10.1080/0963818042000203338
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0963818042000203338
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0963818042000203338?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. Jones, Jj, 1991. "Earnings Management During Import Relief Investigations," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 193-228.
    2. Bowen, Robert M. & DuCharme, Larry & Shores, D., 1995. "Stakeholders' implicit claims and accounting method choice," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 255-295, December.
    3. Sunil Dutta & Frank Gigler, 2002. "The Effect of Earnings Forecasts on Earnings Management," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 631-655, June.
    4. Fishman, Michael J & Hagerty, Kathleen M, 1989. " Disclosure Decisions by Firms and the Competition for Price Efficienc y," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 633-646, July.
    5. Ball, R & Brown, P, 1968. "Empirical Evaluation Of Accounting Income Numbers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 159-178.
    6. Verrecchia, Robert E., 1983. "Discretionary disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 179-194, April.
    7. Aboody, David & Kasznik, Ron, 2000. "CEO stock option awards and the timing of corporate voluntary disclosures," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 73-100, February.
    8. Ivo Welch & Siew Hong Teoh & T.J. Wong, 1995. "Earnings Management and The Post-Issue Underperformance in Seasoned Equity Offerings," Finance 9-95., University of California at Los Angeles.
    9. Beaver, Wh, 1968. "Information Content Of Annual Earnings Announcements," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6, pages 67-92.
    10. Guay, WR & Kothari, SP & Watts, RL, 1996. "A market-based evaluation of discretionary accrual models," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34, pages 83-105.
    11. Collins, Daniel W. & Rozeff, Michael S. & Dhaliwal, Dan S., 1981. "The economic determinants of the market reaction to proposed mandatory accounting changes in the oil and gas industry: A cross-sectional analysis," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 37-71, March.
    12. Diamond, Douglas W, 1985. "Optimal Release of Information by Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1071-1094, September.
    13. Michael J. Fishman & Kathleen M. Hagerty, 1989. "Disclosure Decisions by Firms and the Competition for Price Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 633-646, July.
    14. Guay, W. & Kothari, S.P. & Watts, R.L., 1996. "A Market-Based Evaluation of Discretionary-Accrual Models," Papers 96-01, Rochester, Business - Financial Research and Policy Studies.
    15. Gramlich, J, 1992. "Earnings Management And The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax - Discussion," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30, pages 154-160.
    16. Boynton, Ce & Dobbins, Ps & Plesko, Ga, 1992. "Earnings Management And The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30, pages 131-153.
    17. John M. Friedlan, 1994. "Accounting Choices of Issuers of Initial Public Offerings," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(1), pages 1-31, June.
    18. Healy, Paul M., 1985. "The effect of bonus schemes on accounting decisions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1-3), pages 85-107, April.
    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. Denis Cormier & Pascale Lapointe-Antunes & Bruce J. McConomy, 2014. "Forecasts in IPO Prospectuses: The Effect of Corporate Governance on Earnings Management," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1-2), pages 100-127, January.
    2. Modibbo Abubakar, 2016. "Effect Of Audit Quality And Corporate Governance On Real Activities Manipulation In Nigerian Banks," Proceedings of Economics and Finance Conferences 4206739, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    3. Peng, Xuan & Jia, Yibo & Chan, Kam C. & Wang, Xiongyuan, 2021. "Let us work together: The impact of customer strategic alliances on IPO underpricing and post-IPO performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    4. Cormier, Denis & Martinez, Isabelle, 2006. "The association between management earnings forecasts, earnings management, and stock market valuation: Evidence from French IPOs," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 209-236.
    5. Alhadab, Mohammad & Clacher, Iain, 2018. "The impact of audit quality on real and accrual earnings management around IPOs," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 442-461.
    6. Daoping (Steven) He & David C. Yang & Liming Guan, 2010. "Earnings management and the performance of seasoned private equity placements: Evidence from Japanese issuers," Managerial Auditing Journal, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 25(6), pages 569-590, June.

    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. Dechow, Patricia & Ge, Weili & Schrand, Catherine, 2010. "Understanding earnings quality: A review of the proxies, their determinants and their consequences," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 344-401, December.
    2. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    3. Fields, Thomas D. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Vincent, Linda, 2001. "Empirical research on accounting choice," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 255-307, September.
    4. Ashok Robin & Qiang Wu, 2015. "Firm growth and the pricing of discretionary accruals," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 561-590, October.
    5. Vander Bauwhede, Heidi & Willekens, Marleen & Gaeremynck, Ann, 2003. "Audit firm size, public ownership, and firms' discretionary accruals management," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-22.
    6. Kasanen, Eero & Kinnunen, Juha & Niskanen, Jyrki, 1996. "Dividend-based earnings management: Empirical evidence from Finland," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1-3), pages 283-312, October.
    7. Florian Eugster & Alexander F. Wagner, 2021. "Earning investor trust: The role of past earnings management," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1-2), pages 269-307, January.
    8. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    9. Sidney J. Gray & Tony Kang & Zhiwei Lin & Qingliang Tang, 2015. "Earnings Management in Europe Post IFRS: Do Cultural Influences Persist?," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 55(6), pages 827-856, December.
    10. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2005. "The economic implications of corporate financial reporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-3), pages 3-73, December.
    11. Klein, April, 2002. "Audit committee, board of director characteristics, and earnings management," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 375-400, August.
    12. Adnan Shoaib & Muhammad A. Siddiqui, 2022. "Earning information content changes based on accrual measures and quality measures: Evidences from member countries of Asia Pacific trade agreement," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 1526-1546, January.
    13. Yves Mard, 2005. "Vers Une Information Comptable Plus Transparente : L'Apport Des Recherches Portant Sur La Gestion Des Résultats Comptables," Post-Print halshs-00581229, HAL.
    14. Manfred Frühwirth, 2002. "The optimal timing of the transfer of hidden reserves in the German and Austrian tax systems," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(2), pages 71-88, April.
    15. Alves, Sandra, 2012. "Executive stock options and earnings management in the portuguese listed companies," Revista de Contabilidad - Spanish Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 211-235.
    16. Coles, Jeffrey L. & Hertzel, Michael & Kalpathy, Swaminathan, 2006. "Earnings management around employee stock option reissues," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1-2), pages 173-200, April.
    17. Yongtao Hong & Fariz Huseynov & Sabuhi Sardarli & Wei Zhang, 2020. "Bank earnings management and analyst coverage: evidence from loan loss provisions," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 29-54, July.
    18. Rolf Uwe Fülbier & Thorsten Sellhorn, 2023. "Understanding and improving the language of business: How accounting and corporate reporting research can better serve business and society," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 93(6), pages 1089-1124, August.
    19. K. Peasnell & P. Pope & S. Young, 2000. "Detecting earnings management using cross-sectional abnormal accruals models," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 313-326.
    20. Praveen Kumar & Nisan Langberg & K. Sivaramakrishnan, 2012. "Voluntary Disclosures, Corporate Control, and Investment," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(4), pages 1041-1076, September.

    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:taf:euract:v:13:y:2004:i:2:p:235-259. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REAR20 .

    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.