CEO age, financial reporting quality, and the role of clawback provisions
Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting
ISSN: 1985-2517
Article publication date: 27 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Motivated by rapidly increasing CEO age in the USA, the purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of CEO age on financial reporting quality and consider the moderating role of clawback provisions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a data set of 18,492 US firm-year observations from 2003 to 2019. Financial reporting quality is proxied with accruals-based and real activities earnings management measures, and with financial statement irregularities, measured by applying Benford’s law to financial statement line items. A number of sensitivity tests are conducted including the use of an instrumental variable.
Findings
The results provide evidence that financial statement irregularities are more prevalent when CEOs are older, and they suggest a complex relation between CEO age and real activities earnings management. The results also suggest that the effect of CEO age on financial reporting quality is moderated by the presence of clawback provisions which became mandatory for US-listed firms in October 2022.
Originality/value
This study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to consider the effect of CEO age on financial statement irregularities and earnings management. This study has important implications for stakeholders evaluating the determinants of financial reporting quality, for boards of directors considering CEO age limitations and for policymakers considering mandating clawback provisions, which recently occurred in the USA.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants at the DEMO Workshop at UAB in Barcelona and at the 22nd Workshop on Corporate Governance and Investment in Marburg for their helpful insights. The authors also thank the editor Khaled Hussainey and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.
This research received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant numbers ECO2017-86305-C4-2-R and PID2020-115018RB-C32) and from the Generalitat de Catalunya (grant number 2021 SGR-00112).
Citation
Davis, J.G. and Garcia-Cestona, M. (2023), "CEO age, financial reporting quality, and the role of clawback provisions", Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFRA-04-2023-0176
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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