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Accounting

Louisiana State University

Earnings management

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Earnings Management Of Leaders And Laggards, Candice Roche Boucree Jul 2020

Earnings Management Of Leaders And Laggards, Candice Roche Boucree

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I examine whether earnings management varies by a firm’s life-cycle stage relative to its industry life-cycle stage. This relationship, measured as Leaders, Match, or Laggards, concerns strategic groups with different operating strategies. Leaders (Laggards) employ a pioneering (an imperfect imitation) strategy. Overall, I find evidence that Leaders engage in less earnings management than do Match firms. Specifically, Leaders (Laggards) engage in less (more) accruals-based earnings management (AEM) than do Match firms, and Leaders engage in less real-activities earnings management (RAM) than do Match firms. Within firm life-cycle stages, I find additional evidence …


Income Classification Shifting And Financial Analysts’ Forecasts, Shanshan Pan Jan 2013

Income Classification Shifting And Financial Analysts’ Forecasts, Shanshan Pan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Income classification shifting involves opportunistically misclassifying core expenses into nonrecurring items in order to boost core earnings. Recent studies have documented large sample evidence of its existence (e.g. McVay 2006; Fan et al.,2010; Barua et al.,2010). Managers engage in income classification shifting because they believe the market in general and financial analysts in particular focus on core earnings. If financial analysts are experts in forecasting permanent earnings, they should be expected to identify reported core earnings that have been inflated through classification shifting and revise their future earnings forecast accordingly. Consistent with my prediction, I find that given the same …


Stock Liquidity, Price Informativeness, And Accruals-Based Earnings Management, Jing Fang Jan 2012

Stock Liquidity, Price Informativeness, And Accruals-Based Earnings Management, Jing Fang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We examine the effect of stock liquidity on accruals-based earnings management. Finance literature suggests that stock liquidity leads to price efficiency. If prices are efficient, more future earnings should be reflected in current prices. Therefore, gain from shifting accruals across periods should be low and managers should have less incentive to manage earnings. We find that higher stock liquidity is associated with higher future earnings response coefficient and lower accruals-based earnings management. Our finding has important implication for the decline in accruals-based earnings management during 2001-2005 documented in prior study. Our additional trend analysis suggests that instead of SOX and …


Rate Regulation And Earnings Management: Evidence From The U.S. Electric Utility Industry, Joseph Ben Omonuk Jan 2007

Rate Regulation And Earnings Management: Evidence From The U.S. Electric Utility Industry, Joseph Ben Omonuk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Although accounting research continues to focus on earnings management, few studies have done so within the context of a single industry, and only one study to date (Paek 2001) has investigated this phenomenon within the context of U.S. rate-regulated electric utilities. Most utilities are viewed as natural monopolies, and therefore are subjected to rate regulation. These firms are permitted to earn a prescribed rate of return on an approved rate base. Although utilities are subjected to greater scrutiny than non-regulated public companies, regulatory restraint may create incentives to manage earnings (Healy and Whalen 1999), especially coincident with a utility’s request …


Do Speculative Short Sellers Detect Earnings Management?, Yan Zhang Jan 2004

Do Speculative Short Sellers Detect Earnings Management?, Yan Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines empirically whether sophisticated speculative short sellers can detect earnings management by targeting stocks with large income-increasing discretionary accruals and high total accruals. Prior research indicates that total accruals are overpriced and this overpricing is largely attributable to the mispricing of discretionary accruals. Recent studies show that neither auditors nor financial analysts utilize information in accruals. Using samples of 11,537 firm-quarter observations and 5,118 firm-year observations for 1,146 12/31 non-financial NYSE firms from 1992 to 1999, I find supporting evidence those speculative short sellers can detect earnings management using financial accounting information disclosed in 10-Q and 10-K report. …


The Impact Of Institutional Stock Ownership On A Firm's Earnings Management Practice: An Empirical Investigation, Santanu Mitra Jan 2002

The Impact Of Institutional Stock Ownership On A Firm's Earnings Management Practice: An Empirical Investigation, Santanu Mitra

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines whether institutional investor shareholdings inhibit firm managers from engaging in earnings management practice. It investigates the empirical association between discretion/flexibility available to managers in managing abnormal non-cash working capital accruals and institutional stock ownership for a sample of 386 New York Stock Exchange firms over a period of 8 years, from 1991 through 1998. The differential institutional influence on the level of accrual management of firms having different information environment, S&P 500 versus non S&P 500, is also examined to see whether the difference in information environment of these two sets of firms has any effect on …