We study the interrelation between conservatism and earnings management by examining the allowance for uncollectible accounts and its income statement counterpart, bad debt expense. We find that the allowance is conservative and that it has become more conservative over time. Conservatism may, however, facilitate earnings management. We find that firms manage bad debt expense downward (and even record income‐increasing bad debt expense) to meet or beat analysts’ earnings forecasts and that conservatism accentuates the extent to which firms manage bad debt expense. Further, we find that firms manage bad debt expense downward by drawing down previously recorded over‐accruals of bad debt expense that have accumulated on the balance sheet. An implication of our study is that tighter limits on the amount by which firms are permitted to understate net assets may reduce their ability to manage earnings

We examine how biased financial reports (managed earnings) affect product market competition and how product market competition affects incentives to bias financial reports in a model with fully rational firms. We find that Cournot competitors bias their reports to create the impression that their costs are lower than they actually are. This bias leads to lower total production and a higher product price, even though each firm fully understands its rival’s incentives to bias its financial reports. The magnitude of the bias is larger when firms compete in more profitable product markets and smaller when the firm can extract more information about its rival’s costs from its own. When the costs of misreporting are asymmetric, the lower-cost firm engages in more earnings management than its rival, produces more than it would in a full-information environment, and earns greater profits. Our analysis leads to new, testable relations among earnings management, reported and actual earnings, and industry structure

Private equity placement data allow us to determine whether sophisticated investors can uncover the true value of firms. This can be done by defining sophisticated investors as those who meet the stringent participation requirements of the private equity market. Our results show private equity issuing firms overstate their earnings in the quarter preceding private equity placement announcements and that sophisticated investors do not ask for a fair discount when purchasing the shares of the private issuing firms. We also find evidence showing that the reversal of the effects of pre-issue earnings management is a significant determinant of the long-term performance of private issues. Results further show that post-issue stock performance and operating performance of firms using “aggressive” earnings management significantly underperform those using more “conservative” earnings management

This study examines the ability of revenue and accrual models to detect simulated and actual earnings management. The results indicate that revenue models are less biased, better specified, and more powerful than commonly used accrual models. Using a simulation procedure, I find that revenue models are more likely than accrual models to detect a combination of revenue and expense manipulation. Using a sample of firms subject to SEC enforcement actions for a mix of revenue- and expense-related misstatements, I find that, although revenue models detect manipulation, accrual models do not. These findings provide support for using measures of discretionary revenues to study earnings management

This study examines the association between chief financial officer (CFO) equity incentives and earnings management. Chief executive officer (CEO) equity incentives have been shown to be associated with accruals management and the likelihood of beating analyst forecasts (Bergstresser and Philippon, 2006; Cheng and Warfield, 2005). Because CFOs’ primary responsibility is financial reporting, CFO equity incentives should play a stronger role than those of the CEO in earnings management. We find that the magnitude of accruals and the likelihood of beating analyst forecasts are more sensitive to CFO equity incentives than to those of the CEO. Our evidence supports the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) new disclosure requirement on CFO compensation

We show that SEO firms engage in real activities manipulation, and the decline in post-SEO performance due to the real activities management is more severe than that due to accrual management. Our evidence is important, because it shows that post-SEO operating underperformance is driven not just by accrual reversals, but also reflects the real consequences of operational decisions made to manage earnings. We also show how firms’ choices of real versus accrual-based earnings management activities around SEOs vary predictably as a function of the firm's ability to use accrual management and the costs of doing so

Accounting rules for valuing retained interest from securitizations require management to make assumptions concerning discount rates, default rates, and prepayment rates. These assumptions provide management with discretion to determine the “gain on sale” of the receivables. We investigate whether CEO compensation is less sensitive to securitization gains than to other earnings components in the presence of proxies for how independent (outsiders, females, fewer CEO-selected directors) and informed (financial expertise) directors are. Overall, our results do not suggest that better “monitoring” reduces earnings management or CEO pay-sensitivity to reported securitization gains. Our results suggest that CEOs are rewarded for the gains they report and boards do not intervene

This study investigates whether managers use classification shifting to manage earnings when reporting discontinued operations. Using a methodology similar to McVay (2006), we find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that firms shift operating expenses to income-decreasing discontinued operations to increase core earnings. Our findings also indicate that managers use classification shifting to meet or beat analysts’ forecasts. Finally, we find that, since the introduction of SFAS No. 144, the reporting frequency of discontinued operations has increased; however, the magnitude of classification shifting has decreased. We provide potential explanations for this finding

We examine auditor independence in the banking industry by analyzing the relation between fees paid to auditors and the extent of earnings management through loan loss provisions (LLP). We also examine whether this relation differs across large banks whose managements are required under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act to evaluate internal control over financial reporting and whose auditors must attest to the effectiveness of such internal controls, and small banks that are not subject to those requirements. We find that unexpected auditor fees are unrelated to earnings management for large banks. For small banks, we find greater earnings management via under-provisioning of LLP by banks that pay higher unexpected total and nonaudit fees to the auditor. These results suggest that auditor fee dependence on the audit client is associated with earnings management via abnormal LLP and is a potential threat to auditor independence for small banks. Our findings are relevant to policymakers contemplating new regulations in light of the recent banking crisis

Instrumental variable (IV) methods are commonly used in accounting research (e.g., earnings management, corporate governance, executive compensation, and disclosure research) when the regressor variables are endogenous. While IV estimation is the standard textbook solution to mitigating endogeneity problems, the appropriateness of IV methods in typical accounting research settings is not obvious. Drawing on recent advances in statistics and econometrics, we identify conditions under which IV methods are preferred to OLS estimates and propose a series of tests for research studies employing IV methods. We illustrate these ideas by examining the relation between corporate disclosure and the cost of capital