IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/13207.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Earnings Management and Managerial Honesty: The Investors’ Perspectives

Author

Listed:
  • Wagner, Alexander F.
  • Gibson Brandon, Rajna
  • Sohn, Matthias
  • Tanner, Carmen

Abstract

Extant research shows that CEO characteristics affect earnings management. This paper studies how investors infer a specific characteristic of CEOs, namely moral commitment to honesty, from earnings management and how this perception – in conjunction with their own social and moral preferences – shapes their investment choices. We conduct two laboratory experiments simulating investment choices. Our results show that participants perceive a CEO to be more committed to honesty when they infer that the CEO engaged less in earnings management. For investment decisions, a one standard deviation increase in a CEO's perceived commitment to honesty compared to another CEO reduces the relevance of differences in the CEOs’ claimed future returns by 40%. This effect is most prominent among investors with a proself value orientation. To prosocial investors, their own honesty values and those attributed to the CEO matter directly, while returns play a secondary role. Overall, perceived CEO honesty matters to different investors for distinct reasons.

Suggested Citation

  • Wagner, Alexander F. & Gibson Brandon, Rajna & Sohn, Matthias & Tanner, Carmen, 2018. "Earnings Management and Managerial Honesty: The Investors’ Perspectives," CEPR Discussion Papers 13207, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13207
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP13207
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laura Bottazzi & Marco Da Rin & Thomas Hellmann, 2016. "Editor's Choice The Importance of Trust for Investment: Evidence from Venture Capital," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(9), pages 2283-2318.
    2. Dyer, Douglas & Kagel, John H & Levin, Dan, 1989. "A Comparison of Naive and Experienced Bidders in Common Value Offer Auctions: A Laboratory Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(394), pages 108-115, March.
    3. Michael Kirchler & Florian Lindner & Utz Weitzel, 2018. "Rankings and Risk‐Taking in the Finance Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(5), pages 2271-2302, October.
    4. Pevzner, Mikhail & Xie, Fei & Xin, Xiangang, 2015. "When firms talk, do investors listen? The role of trust in stock market reactions to corporate earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 190-223.
    5. Simon G�chter & Arno Riedl, "undated". "Moral Property Rights in Bargaining," IEW - Working Papers 113, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    6. Hong, Harrison & Kostovetsky, Leonard, 2012. "Red and blue investing: Values and finance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 1-19.
    7. Roland Benabou & Jean Tirole, 2004. "Willpower and Personal Rules," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(4), pages 848-886, August.
    8. Ann B. Gillette & Thomas H. Noe & Michael J. Rebello, 2008. "Board Structures Around the World: an Experimental Investigation," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 12(1), pages 93-140.
    9. Rajna Gibson & Carmen Tanner & Alexander F. Wagner, 2013. "Preferences for Truthfulness: Heterogeneity among and within Individuals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 532-548, February.
    10. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    11. Ginger Zhe Jin & Andrew Kato, 2006. "Price, quality, and reputation: evidence from an online field experiment," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 983-1005, December.
    12. L. Bottazzi & M. Da Rin & T. Hellmann, 2007. "The Importance of Trust for Investment: Evidence from Venture Capital," Working Papers 612, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    13. Elena Asparouhova & Peter Bossaerts & Nilanjan Roy & William Zame, 2016. "“Lucas” in the Laboratory," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2727-2780, December.
    14. Mariassunta Giannetti & Tracy Yue Wang, 2016. "Corporate Scandals and Household Stock Market Participation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2591-2636, December.
    15. Kumar, Alok & Page, Jeremy K. & Spalt, Oliver G., 2011. "Religious beliefs, gambling attitudes, and financial market outcomes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(3), pages 671-708.
    16. Ann B. Gillette & Thomas H. Noe & Michael J. Rebello, 2008. "Board structures around the world: An experimental investigation," Economics Series Working Papers 2008fe15, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    17. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2002. "Altruistic punishment in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 415(6868), pages 137-140, January.
    18. Kuhnen, Camelia M. & Miu, Andrei C., 2017. "Socioeconomic status and learning from financial information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 349-372.
    19. Leonard Kostovetsky, 2016. "Whom Do You Trust?: Investor-Advisor Relationships and Mutual Fund Flows," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(4), pages 898-936.
    20. Jonathan E. Alevy & Michael S. Haigh & John A. List, 2007. "Information Cascades: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(1), pages 151-180, February.
    21. Orly Sade & Charles Schnitzlein & Jaime Zender, 2006. "Competition and cooperation in divisible good auctions: An experimental examination," Artefactual Field Experiments 00105, The Field Experiments Website.
    22. Guiso, Luigi & Sapienza, Paola & Zingales, Luigi, 2015. "The value of corporate culture," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 60-76.
    23. Douglas D. Davis & Charles A. Holt, 1992. "Introduction to Experimental Economics," Introductory Chapters, in: Experimental Economics, Princeton University Press.
    24. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2008. "Trusting the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2557-2600, December.
    25. Hong, Harrison & Kacperczyk, Marcin, 2009. "The price of sin: The effects of social norms on markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 15-36, July.
    26. Alain Cohn & Ernst Fehr & Michel André Maréchal, 2017. "Do Professional Norms in the Banking Industry Favor Risk-taking?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(11), pages 3801-3823.
    27. Michael C. Jensen, 2005. "Agency Costs of Overvalued Equity," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 34(1), Spring.
    28. Plott, Charles R & Sunder, Shyam, 1988. "Rational Expectations and the Aggregation of Diverse Information in Laboratory Security Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1085-1118, September.
    29. Luzi Hail & Ahmed Tahoun & Clare Wang, 2017. "Corporate Scandals and Regulation," Working Papers Series 71, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    30. Jennifer Francis & Dhananjay Nanda & Per Olsson, 2008. "Voluntary Disclosure, Earnings Quality, and Cost of Capital," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 53-99, March.
    31. Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Deception: The Role of Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 384-394, March.
    32. Zachary Grossman & Joël J. van der Weele, 2017. "Self-Image and Willful Ignorance in Social Decisions," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 173-217.
    33. Paul Resnick & Richard Zeckhauser & John Swanson & Kate Lockwood, 2006. "The value of reputation on eBay: A controlled experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(2), pages 79-101, June.
    34. Simon Gächter & Arno Riedl, 2005. "Moral Property Rights in Bargaining with Infeasible Claims," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(2), pages 249-263, February.
    35. Huberman, Gur, 2001. "Familiarity Breeds Investment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(3), pages 659-680.
    36. Basak, Suleyman, 2000. "A model of dynamic equilibrium asset pricing with heterogeneous beliefs and extraneous risk," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 63-95, January.
    37. Cary Frydman & Colin Camerer, 2016. "Neural Evidence of Regret and Its Implications for Investor Behavior," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(11), pages 3108-3139.
    38. Smith, Vernon L & Suchanek, Gerry L & Williams, Arlington W, 1988. "Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1119-1151, September.
    39. George A. Akerlof & Robert J. Shiller, 2015. "Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10534.
    40. John R. Graham & Alok Kumar, 2006. "Do Dividend Clienteles Exist? Evidence on Dividend Preferences of Retail Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1305-1336, June.
    41. Cary Frydman & Nicholas Barberis & Colin Camerer & Peter Bossaerts & Antonio Rangel, 2014. "Using Neural Data to Test a Theory of Investor Behavior: An Application to Realization Utility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(2), pages 907-946, April.
    42. Orly Sade & Charles Schnitzlein & Jaime F. Zender, 2006. "Competition and Cooperation in Divisible Good Auctions: An Experimental Examination," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 195-235.
    43. Dejong, Douglas V. & Forsythe, Robert & Uecker, Wilfred C., 1988. "A note on the use of businessmen as subjects in sealed offer markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 87-100, January.
    44. Ginger Zhe Jin & Andrew Kato, 2006. "Price, quality, and reputation: evidence from an online field experiment," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 983-1005, December.
    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. Pham, Mia Hang, 2020. "In law we trust: Lawyer CEOs and stock liquidity," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).

    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. Gibson, Rajna & Sohn, Matthias & Tanner, Carmen & Wagner, Alexander F., 2021. "Earnings Management and Managerial Honesty: The Investors' Perspectives," LawFin Working Paper Series 7, Goethe University, Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin).
    2. David Hirshleife, 2015. "Behavioral Finance," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 133-159, December.
    3. Florian Eugster & Alexander F. Wagner, 2021. "Earning investor trust: The role of past earnings management," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1-2), pages 269-307, January.
    4. Quentin Dupont & Jonathan M. Karpoff, 2020. "The Trust Triangle: Laws, Reputation, and Culture in Empirical Finance Research," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 217-238, May.
    5. Jens Hagendorff & Sonya Lim & Duc Duy Nguyen, 2023. "Lender Trust and Bank Loan Contracts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(3), pages 1758-1779, March.
    6. Christoph Huber & Christian König-Kersting & Matteo M. Marini, 2022. "Experimenting with Financial Professionals," Working Papers 2022-07, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck, revised Jun 2024.
    7. Omar Al-Ubaydli & John List, 2016. "Field Experiments in Markets," Artefactual Field Experiments j0002, The Field Experiments Website.
    8. Dak-Adzaklo, Cephas Simon Peter & Wong, Raymond M.K., 2024. "Corporate governance reforms, societal trust, and corporate financial policies," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    9. Brian Albrecht & Omar Al-Ubaydli & Peter Boettke, 2022. "Testing the Hayek hypothesis: Recent theoretical and experimental evidence," Artefactual Field Experiments 00759, The Field Experiments Website.
    10. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    11. Utz Weitzel & Christoph Huber & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler & Florian Lindner & Julia Rose & Lauren Cohen, 2020. "Bubbles and Financial Professionals," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(6), pages 2659-2696.
    12. Al-Ubaydli, Omar & Boettke, Peter, 2010. "Markets as economizers of information: Field experimental examination of the “Hayek Hypothesis”," MPRA Paper 27660, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Huber, Christoph & Kirchler, Michael, 2023. "Experiments in finance: A survey of historical trends," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    14. Martin Kapons & Peter Kelly & Robert Stoumbos & Rafael Zambrana, 2023. "Dividends, trust, and firm value," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 1354-1387, September.
    15. Gu, Leilei & Liu, Zhongyang & Ma, Sichao & Wang, Hongyu, 2022. "Social trust and corporate financial asset holdings: Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    16. Fei Xie & Bohui Zhang & Wenrui Zhang, 2022. "Trust, Incomplete Contracting, and Corporate Innovation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3419-3443, May.
    17. Leon Zolotoy & Don O’Sullivan & Keke Song, 2021. "The Role of Ethical Standards in the Relationship Between Religious Social Norms and M&A Announcement Returns," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 170(4), pages 721-742, May.
    18. Qin, Wei & Liang, Quanxi & Jiao, Yan & Lu, Meiting & Shan, Yaowen, 2022. "Social trust and dividend payouts: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    19. Dowling, Michael & O’Gorman, Colm & Puncheva, Petya & Vanwalleghem, Dieter, 2019. "Trust and SME attitudes towards equity financing across Europe," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1-1.
    20. Jin, Ming & Liu, Jinshan & Chen, Zhongfei, 2022. "Impacts of social trust on corporate leverage: Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 505-521.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Earnings management; Honesty; Investor preferences; Investor segmentation; Protected values; Social value orientation; Trust;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G0 - Financial Economics - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:13207. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.