IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ebg/essewp/dr-04008.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Information Limit to Honest Managerial Behavior

Author

Listed:

Abstract

In the last years of the Internet bubble, many managers provided fraudulent financial statements with the aim at inflating the market value of their firms. Is this shortage of honesty an accident or a buit-in feature of shareholder capitalism? This paper argues that in an economy hosting publicly traded companies where investors have only imperfect information about a firm’s type and where a honest financial report may be wrong, at least some bad firms managers will provide false statements. Furthermore, in equilibrium some good firm managers may also resort to corrupt auditors which will issue a favorable report without carrying out any investigation. The frequency of dishonest managers is analysed in keeping with the precision of the report and the total number of firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Besancenot, Damien & Vranceanu, Radu, 2004. "The Information Limit to Honest Managerial Behavior," ESSEC Working Papers DR 04008, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:essewp:dr-04008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.essec.fr/faculty/showDeclFileRes.do?declId=5540&key=__workpaper__
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baiman, S & Verrecchia, RE, 1996. "The relation among capital markets, financial disclosure, production efficiency, and insider trading," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(1), pages 1-22.
    2. Brickley, James A. & Smith Jr., Clifford W. & Zimmerman, Jerold L., 2002. "Business ethics and organizational architecture," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(9), pages 1821-1835, September.
    3. Diamond, Douglas W & Verrecchia, Robert E, 1991. "Disclosure, Liquidity, and the Cost of Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1325-1359, September.
    4. Besancenot, Damien & Vranceanu, Radu, 2002. "Manager honesty and foreign investment in developing countries," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 231-250, September.
    5. Leuz, Christian & Nanda, Dhananjay & Wysocki, Peter D., 2003. "Earnings management and investor protection: an international comparison," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 505-527, September.
    6. Bushman, RM & Gigler, F & Indjejikian, RJ, 1996. "A model of two-tiered financial reporting," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34, pages 51-74.
    7. Baruch Lev, 2003. "Corporate Earnings: Facts and Fiction," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 27-50, Spring.
    8. Noreen, Eric, 1988. "The economics of ethics: A new perspective on agency theory," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 359-369, June.
    9. Paolo Mauro, 1995. "Corruption and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 681-712.
    10. Baiman, S & Lewis, Bl, 1989. "An Experiment Testing The Behavioral Equivalence Of Strategically Equivalent Employment Contracts," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 1-20.
    11. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1977. "Economics from a Biological Viewpoint," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-52, April.
    12. Joel S. Demski, 2003. "Corporate Conflicts of Interest," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 51-72, Spring.
    13. Paul M. Healy & Krishna G. Palepu, 2003. "The Fall of Enron," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 3-26, Spring.
    14. Frank, Robert H, 1987. "If Homo Economicus Could Choose His Own Utility Function, Would He Want One with a Conscience?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 593-604, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Besancenot, Damien & Vranceanu, Radu, 2007. "Equilibrium (dis)honesty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 232-249, October.
    2. James K. Self, 2006. "Asymmetric Stationarity in National Stock Market Indices: An MTAR Analysis," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(6), pages 3153-3174, November.
    3. Besancenot, Damien & Vrânceanu, Radu, 2010. "Financial Distress And Banks'communication Policy In Crisis Times," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(1), pages 5-20, March.
    4. Chen, Qi & Vashishtha, Rahul, 2017. "The effects of bank mergers on corporate information disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 56-77.
    5. Iatridis, George, 2010. "International Financial Reporting Standards and the quality of financial statement information," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 193-204, June.
    6. Verrecchia, Robert E., 2001. "Essays on disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 97-180, December.
    7. Edona PERJUCI & Hysen ISMAJLI & Ardiana BUNJAKU, 2019. "Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) and their Impact on Loan Terms: Kosovo Case," The Audit Financiar journal, Chamber of Financial Auditors of Romania, vol. 17(153), pages 124-124.
    8. Verrecchia, Robert E., 1999. "Disclosure and the cost of capital: A discussion," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1-3), pages 271-283, January.
    9. Zhong, Rong (Irene), 2018. "Transparency and firm innovation," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 67-93.
    10. Francesco Giuli & Marco Manzo, 2009. "Enhancing Bank Transparency: What Role for the Supervision Authority?," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 56(4), pages 1-58, December.
    11. 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).
    12. Vranceanu, Radu, 2003. "Manager Unethical Behavior During The New Economy Bubble," ESSEC Working Papers DR 03026, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    13. Vranceanu, Radu, 2005. "The Ethical Dimension of Economic Choices," ESSEC Working Papers DR 05001, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    14. Jiang, Jinglin & Nanda, Vikram & Xiao, Steven Chong, 2021. "Stock-market disruptions and corporate disclosure policies," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    15. Luzi Hail, 2011. "Discussion of Consequences and Institutional Determinants of Unregulated Corporate Financial Statements: Evidence from Embedded Value Reporting," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 573-594, May.
    16. Jeroen Suijs, 2008. "On the Value Relevance of Asymmetric Financial Reporting Policies," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 1297-1321, December.
    17. Kanazawa, Satoshi, 2005. "Is "discrimination" necessary to explain the sex gap in earnings?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 269-287, April.
    18. Ingela Alger & Jörgen W. Weibull, 2013. "Homo Moralis—Preference Evolution Under Incomplete Information and Assortative Matching," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(6), pages 2269-2302, November.
    19. Hu, Juncheng, 2021. "Do facilitation payments affect earnings management? Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    20. Guttentag Michael, 2007. "Accuracy Enhancement, Agency Costs, and Disclosure Regulation," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 611-641, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corporate fraud; Accounting information; Manager behavior; Honesty; Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    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:ebg:essewp:dr-04008. 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: Sophie Magnanou (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essecfr.html .

    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.