Lang, Mark (U of North Carolina) Raedy, Jana Smith Wilson, Wendy
Abstract
We compare the characteristics of US GAAP earnings for US firms with reconciled earnings for non-US firms cross listing on US markets. We find that the reconciled earnings for non-US firms differ systematically from US GAAP earnings for US firms, and are characterized by more evidence of smoothing, a greater tendency to manage earnings towards a target, a lower association with share price and less timely recognition of losses. Further, splitting by country of domicile, firms from countries with relatively weak local investor protection environments show more evidence of earnings management in the reconciled accounts, suggesting that the extra layer of regulation imposed by the SEC does not supplant the effect of the local regulatory environment. While evidence of earnings management is stronger for cross-listed firms that reconcile to US GAAP than for those that prepare local accounts in accordance with US GAAP, both sets show more evidence of earnings management than the matched US firms, suggesting that reconciliation may explain part, but not all, of the results.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center in its series Working Papers with number
05-3.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: