IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bracre/v56y2024i4s0890838924000969.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Blockchain and earnings management: Evidence from the supply chain

Author

Listed:
  • Autore, Donald
  • Chen, Huimin (Amy)
  • Clarke, Nicholas
  • Lin, Jingrong

Abstract

We investigate whether corporate adoption of blockchain technology is associated with a change in firms' financial reporting behavior. On one hand, the features of blockchain technology (immutability, decentralized consensus, and real-time data sharing) can enhance data integrity, suggesting corporate blockchain adoptions may reduce earnings management. However, despite fast growth in blockchain adoptions, it remains unclear whether improved financial reporting quality or reduced accounting manipulation is a motivating factor in firms' blockchain adoption as firms vary in how they implement this new technology. On the other hand, the hype and/or increased expectations associated with blockchain adoptions, as well as the market's misperception that blockchain adoption could increase data integrity, may incentivize and provide opportunity for firms to upwardly manage earnings. We conduct our tests in the setting of the supply chain, as prior work establishes that shocks to one firm can impact linked firms through customer-supplier relationships. Our empirical evidence supports the latter prediction, as we find robust evidence that supplier firms' earnings management increases after their customers adopt blockchain. This result holds with numerous robustness tests. We provide direct evidence consistent with hype/increased expectations and reduced monitoring of supplier firms. Our findings suggest unintended consequences of blockchain adoption on financial reporting.

Suggested Citation

  • Autore, Donald & Chen, Huimin (Amy) & Clarke, Nicholas & Lin, Jingrong, 2024. "Blockchain and earnings management: Evidence from the supply chain," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(4).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:56:y:2024:i:4:s0890838924000969
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2024.101357
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890838924000969
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bar.2024.101357?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hainmueller, Jens, 2012. "Entropy Balancing for Causal Effects: A Multivariate Reweighting Method to Produce Balanced Samples in Observational Studies," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, January.
    2. Patell, Jm, 1976. "Corporate Forecasts Of Earnings Per Share And Stock-Price Behavior - Empirical Tests," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(2), pages 246-276.
    3. Garel, Alexandre & Martin-Flores, Jose M. & Petit-Romec, Arthur & Scott, Ayesha, 2021. "Institutional investor distraction and earnings management," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    4. Samuels, Delphine & Taylor, Daniel J. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 2021. "The economics of misreporting and the role of public scrutiny," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1).
    5. Jones, Jj, 1991. "Earnings Management During Import Relief Investigations," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 193-228.
    6. Lin William Cong & Zhiguo He, 2019. "Blockchain Disruption and Smart Contracts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 1754-1797.
    7. Shail Pandit & Charles E. Wasley & Tzachi Zach, 2011. "Information Externalities along the Supply Chain: The Economic Determinants of Suppliers’ Stock Price Reaction to Their Customers’ Earnings Announcements," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(4), pages 1304-1343, December.
    8. Roychowdhury, Sugata, 2006. "Earnings management through real activities manipulation," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 335-370, December.
    9. Azi Ben-Rephael & Zhi Da & Ryan D. Israelsen, 2017. "It Depends on Where You Search: Institutional Investor Attention and Underreaction to News," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(9), pages 3009-3047.
    10. David Yermack, 2017. "Corporate Governance and Blockchains," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(1), pages 7-31.
    11. Stephanie F. Cheng & Gus De Franco & Haibo Jiang & Pengkai Lin, 2019. "Riding the Blockchain Mania: Public Firms’ Speculative 8-K Disclosures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(12), pages 5901-5913, December.
    12. Elisabeth Kempf & Alberto Manconi & Oliver Spalt, 2017. "Distracted Shareholders and Corporate Actions," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(5), pages 1660-1695.
    13. 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).
    14. Brian Gibbons & Peter Iliev & Jonathan Kalodimos, 2021. "Analyst Information Acquisition via EDGAR," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 769-793, February.
    15. Ron Kasznik & Maureen F. McNichols, 2002. "Does Meeting Earnings Expectations Matter? Evidence from Analyst Forecast Revisions and Share Prices," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(3), pages 727-759, June.
    16. Paul Hribar & D. Craig Nichols, 2007. "The Use of Unsigned Earnings Quality Measures in Tests of Earnings Management," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 45(5), pages 1017-1053, December.
    17. 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.
    18. Chen, Sheng-Syan & Huang, Chia-Wei, 2013. "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Earnings Management, and Post-Buyback Performance of Open-Market Repurchasing Firms," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(6), pages 1847-1876, December.
    19. Cahill, Daniel & G. Baur, Dirk & (Frank) Liu, Zhangxin & W. Yang, Joey, 2020. "I am a blockchain too: How does the market respond to companies’ interest in blockchain?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    20. 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.
    21. Peng, Lin & Xiong, Wei, 2006. "Investor attention, overconfidence and category learning," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 563-602, June.
    22. Michael S. Drake & Darren T. Roulstone & Jacob R. Thornock, 2015. "The Determinants and Consequences of Information Acquisition via EDGAR," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 1128-1161, September.
    23. Anna M. Costello, 2020. "Credit Market Disruptions and Liquidity Spillover Effects in the Supply Chain," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(9), pages 3434-3468.
    24. Vivian W. Fang & Allen H. Huang & Jonathan M. Karpoff, 2016. "Short Selling and Earnings Management: A Controlled Experiment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(3), pages 1251-1294, June.
    25. Lauren Cohen & Andrea Frazzini, 2008. "Economic Links and Predictable Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1977-2011, August.
    26. Dai, Rui & Ng, Lilian & Zaiats, Nataliya, 2022. "Short seller attention," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    27. Jeremy Bertomeu & Edwige Cheynel & Eric Floyd & Wenqiang Pan, 2021. "Using machine learning to detect misstatements," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 468-519, June.
    28. Tim Loughran & Bill McDonald, 2017. "The Use of EDGAR Filings by Investors," Journal of Behavioral Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 231-248, April.
    29. Hainmueller, Jens & Xu, Yiqing, 2013. "ebalance: A Stata Package for Entropy Balancing," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 54(i07).
    30. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    31. Klein, Benjamin & Crawford, Robert G & Alchian, Armen A, 1978. "Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 297-326, October.
    32. Carlos‐Alberto Dorantes & Chan Li & Gary F. Peters & Vernon J. Richardson, 2013. "The Effect of Enterprise Systems Implementation on the Firm Information Environment," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(4), pages 1427-1461, December.
    33. Jana Schmitz & Giulia Leoni, 2019. "Accounting and Auditing at the Time of Blockchain Technology: A Research Agenda," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 29(2), pages 331-342, June.
    34. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:1083-1124 is not listed on IDEAS
    35. Klein, Benjamin & Murphy, Kevin M, 1997. "Vertical Integration as a Self-Enforcing Contractual Arrangement," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 415-420, May.
    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. Mohamed Nofel & Mahmoud Marzouk & Hany Elbardan & Reda Saleh & Aly Mogahed, 2024. "From Sensors to Standardized Financial Reports: A Proposed Automated Accounting System Integrating IoT, Blockchain, and XBRL," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 17(10), pages 1-30, October.
    2. Yonggen Luo & Miaomiao Fang & Antai Li & Shiqiang Chen, 2024. "Opportunity or opportunism? Blockchain technology adoption and corporate default risk," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, December.

    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. Godsell, David & Huang, Kelly & Lao, Brent, 2023. "Managers’ rank & file employee coordination costs and real activities manipulation," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    2. Boland, Matthew & Godsell, David, 2020. "Local soldier fatalities and war profiteers: New tests of the political cost hypothesis," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1).
    3. Griffin, Paul A. & Hong, Hyun A. & Liu, Yun & Ryou, Ji Woo, 2021. "The dark side of CEO social capital: Evidence from real earnings management and future operating performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    4. Dai, Rui & Ng, Lilian & Zaiats, Nataliya, 2022. "Short seller attention," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    5. Fargher, Neil & Wee, Marvin, 2019. "The impact of Ball and Brown (1968) on generations of research," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 55-72.
    6. Oloyede Obagbuwa & Farai Kwenda & Kiran Baldavoo, 2024. "Monitoring Intensity, Institutional Shareholders, and Earnings Manipulation Engendered Accounting Scandal: The South African Perspective," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 14(3), pages 12-22, May.
    7. Neilson, Jed J., 2022. "Investor information gathering and the resolution of uncertainty," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1).
    8. 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).
    9. Li, Frank Weikai & Sun, Chengzhu, 2022. "Information acquisition and expected returns: Evidence from EDGAR search traffic," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    10. Alexandre Garel & Jose Martin-Flores & Arthur Petit-Romec & Ayesha Scott, 2021. "Institutional investor distraction and earnings management," Post-Print hal-03096196, HAL.
    11. Cristi A. Gleason & Sascha Kieback & Martin Thomsen & Christoph Watrin, 2021. "Monitoring or payroll maximization? What happens when workers enter the boardroom?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 1046-1087, September.
    12. Gounopoulos, Dimitrios & Loukopoulos, Georgios & Loukopoulos, Panagiotis & Zhang, Yu, 2024. "Do CFO career concerns matter? Evidence from IPO financial reporting outcomes," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    13. Huang, Wei & Goodell, John W. & Zhang, Hong, 2019. "Pre-merger management in developing markets: The role of earnings glamor," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    14. Yangyang Chen & C. S. Agnes Cheng & Shuo Li & Jingran Zhao, 2021. "The monitoring role of the media: Evidence from earnings management," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3-4), pages 533-563, March.
    15. Chen, Huimin (Amy) & Wu, Qiang, 2021. "Short selling threat and real activity manipulation: Evidence from a natural experiment," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    16. Ahmed M. Elnahas & Pankaj K. Jain & Thomas H. McInish, 2022. "Mixed‐signal stock splits," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(5-6), pages 934-962, May.
    17. Zicheng Lei & Dimitris Petmezas & P. Raghavendra Rau & Chen Yang, 2025. "Born to behave: Home CEOs and financial misconduct," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 1309-1354, June.
    18. Gao, Lei & Han, Jianlei & Kim, Jeong-Bon & Pan, Zheyao, 2024. "Overlapping institutional ownership along the supply chain and earnings management of supplier firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    19. Wu, Xiting & Jiang, Haiyan & Lin, Hui & You, Jiaxing, 2023. "Why Muddy the Water? Short selling and the disclosure of proprietary information," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(4).
    20. Chang, Chu-Hsuan & Lin, Hsiou-Wei William, 2018. "Does there prevail momentum in earnings management for seasoned equity offering firms?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 111-129.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:bracre:v:56:y:2024:i:4:s0890838924000969. 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: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-british-accounting-review .

    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.