Monitoring earnings management in emerging markets

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption complements corporate governance factors (e.g. ownership structure) in monitoring managers’ discretional behavior in an emerging market context. Design/methodology/approach - – The paper relies on a sample of listed companies in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, South Africa and the Philippines during an eight-year period on average (four years of pre-adoption period and four years of post-adoption period). Findings - – The authors find no evidence of lower earnings management after the switch to IFRS reporting, suggesting that managerial discretional behavior is insensitive to a firm’s IFRS adoption. However, the authors document effective monitoring role of a firm’s ownership structure on earnings management. More interestingly, institutional investors are effective in constraining earnings management when holding a high level of ownership. Moreover, the effect of blockholders and institutional blockholders varies as their ownership rises following a non-linear pattern. Research limitations/implications - – First, the assumption that discretionary accruals are adequate measure of earnings management may be criticized in different ways. Second, the findings, performed on listed companies in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, South Africa and the Philippines, should be interpreted with caution and cannot be generalized to all emerging market countries. Practical implications - – Standards setters and market authorities should be aware of earnings management determinants to set adequate and fitting accounting standards limiting opportunistic behavior of managers and mainly to set up training programs to accounting professionals improving the IFRS implementation. Moreover, considering specific features of firms in emerging market countries related to ownership structure, international investors may rely on such criteria to evaluate firms. Finally, auditors should be aware of different incentives for earnings management in order to be able to detect eventual manipulation of accounting earnings. Originality/value - – This paper provides a timely contribution to the continuous debate of the effect of IFRS adoption on earnings management in a poorly exploited setting, emerging market context. When investigating, additionally, the eventual non-linear effect of institutional ownership, block ownership, institutional block ownership and non-institutional block ownership on earnings management, a major contribution is that it brings to light the finding of a differential influence of ownership levels on earnings management.