IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jfr/afr111/v2y2013i2p105.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Earnings Management and the Financial Statement Analyst

Author

Listed:
  • Steven C. Hall
  • Vipin Agrawal
  • Pushpa Agrawal

Abstract

This paper reviews earnings management literature from the perspective of the financial statement analyst. The analyst will want to know if the company being analyzed is likely to have manipulated or managed the financial statement numbers, which numbers in the financial statements are most likely to have been managed, and the magnitude of the management. For several decades researchers have been documenting the manipulation or management of financial statement numbers. They have documented various management devices and a host of contexts that provide incentive to manage. Yet, this review reveals that an individual analyst, working to understand a single company, has little to guide him or her in assessing the probability that the firm under consideration has managed financial statement numbers, which numbers may have been managed, and to what extent they may have been managed. While much work has been done and many papers published, the hard work of making the research useful to the financial statement user remains to be done.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven C. Hall & Vipin Agrawal & Pushpa Agrawal, 2013. "Earnings Management and the Financial Statement Analyst," Accounting and Finance Research, Sciedu Press, vol. 2(2), pages 105-105, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:jfr:afr111:v:2:y:2013:i:2:p:105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/afr/article/download/2639/1682
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/afr/article/view/2639
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Park, Myung Seok & Park, Taewoo, 2004. "Insider sales and earnings management," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 381-411.
    3. Erickson, Merle & Wang, Shiing-wu, 1999. "Earnings management by acquiring firms in stock for stock mergers," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 149-176, April.
    4. Kasznik, R, 1999. "On the association between voluntary disclosure and earnings management," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 57-81.
    5. Joseph Aharony & Chan†Jane Lin & Martin P. Loeb, 1993. "Initial Public Offerings, Accounting Choices, and Earnings Management," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(1), pages 61-81, September.
    6. 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.
    7. Perry, Susan E. & Williams, Thomas H., 1994. "Earnings management preceding management buyout offers," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 157-179, 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. 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. Yu, Fang (Frank), 2008. "Analyst coverage and earnings management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 245-271, May.
    3. Hervé Stolowy & Gaetan Breton, 2000. "A Framework for the Classification of Accounts Manipulations," Working Papers hal-00597249, HAL.
    4. Jorge Farinha & Luis Filipe Viana, 2006. "Board structure and modified audit opinions: the case of the Portuguese Stock Exchange," CEF.UP Working Papers 0609, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    5. Rajashri Chatterjee & Debdas Rakshit, 2023. "Association Between Earnings Management and Corporate Governance Mechanisms: A Study Based on Select Firms in India," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 24(1), pages 152-170, February.
    6. Shivakumar, Lakshmanan, 2000. "Do firms mislead investors by overstating earnings before seasoned equity offerings?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 339-371, June.
    7. Mao, Yaping & Renneboog, Luc, 2015. "Do managers manipulate earnings prior to management buyouts?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 43-61.
    8. Wolfgang Breuer & Andreas Knetsch & Astrid Juliane Salzmann, 2020. "What Does It Mean When Managers Talk About Trust?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 473-488, October.
    9. 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.
    10. Pawan Madhogarhia & Ninon Sutton & Theodor Kohers, 2009. "Earnings management practices among growth and value firms," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(22), pages 1767-1778.
    11. Xie, Biao & Davidson, Wallace III & DaDalt, Peter J., 2003. "Earnings management and corporate governance: the role of the board and the audit committee," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 295-316, June.
    12. Prena Rani & Fazeena Fazneen Hussain & Priyashni Vandana Chand, 2013. "Managerial Incentives For Earnings Management Among Listed Firms: Evidence From Fiji," Global Journal of Business Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 7(1), pages 21-31.
    13. Ayers, Benjamin C. & Ramalingegowda, Santhosh & Eric Yeung, P., 2011. "Hometown advantage: The effects of monitoring institution location on financial reporting discretion," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 41-61, June.
    14. 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.
    15. Lin, Wen-Chun & Liao, Tsai-Ling, 2018. "Managerial reporting behavior around exchange switching: Consideration of current and future performance," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 218-237.
    16. Ahmed M. Elnahas & Pankaj K. Jain & Thomas H. McInish, 2018. "Exploring the manipulation toolkit: the failure of Doral Financial Corporation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 157-171, January.
    17. Nooraisah Katmon & Omar Al Farooque, 2017. "Exploring the Impact of Internal Corporate Governance on the Relation Between Disclosure Quality and Earnings Management in the UK Listed Companies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 142(2), pages 345-367, May.
    18. Frode Kjærland & Ane Tolnes Haugdal & Anna Søndergaard & Anne Vågslid, 2020. "Corporate Governance and Earnings Management in a Nordic Perspective: Evidence from the Oslo Stock Exchange," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-18, October.
    19. 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.
    20. Susana Callao & José I. Jarne & David Wróblewski, 2017. "Why Do Companies From Emerging Countries Manage Earnings?," Eurasian Journal of Business and Management, Eurasian Publications, vol. 5(2), pages 60-84.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    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:jfr:afr111:v:2:y:2013:i:2:p:105. 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: Sciedu Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.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.