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This research paper aims to examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics on earnings management.

Research samples are manufacturing firms listed in the Indonesian Stock Exchange 2015–2021. CEO characteristics include narcissism, gender, age, tenure, experience, nationality and founding family status. Data analysis uses random-effect regression.

The result shows that higher narcissism CEOs have aggressive characteristics so they will be more likely to engage in accrual and real earnings management. Female CEOs, foreign CEOs and founding-family CEOs have higher monitoring and business ethics characteristics so they will be less likely to engage in accrual and real earnings management. CEOs with higher education levels have higher thinking complexity so they will be more likely to engage in accrual earnings management with higher regulator and auditor monitoring barriers than real earnings management. CEOs with financial and accounting experience are familiar with accounting standards and auditor monitoring barriers so they will be more likely to engage in accrual earnings management than real earnings management. On the other hand, there are no effects of CEO age and tenure on earnings management.

This research contributes to providing evidence of the effect of CEO characteristics on earnings management in a specific industry such as manufacturing firms and emerging markets such as Indonesia with the majority group firms being family firms.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this study examines the relationship between the presence of a female (rather than a male) audit partner and the client firm’s accruals quality. Second, this study explores whether and how the female audit partners’ specific attributes influence the gendered auditor effect on the quality of the client firm’s accruals quality (if it exists).

Research hypotheses have been tested by conducting both univariate and multivariate empirical analyses based on a large sample of firm-year observations from the Swedish Corporation for the years 2010–2019. During the sample timeframe, the client firms have been audited by 56 female and 231 male audit partners.

The research findings first indicate that client firms of female audit partners are associated with downward earnings management, indicating a beneficial female auditor effect on client firm’s accruals quality. Results from the audit partner change analysis exhibit that the adverse female auditor effect on the client firm’s earnings management, and hence, the beneficial female auditor effect on the client firm’s accruals quality occurs from the first year of the assignment of a female audit partner to replace a male audit partner. When looking at how specific attributes of female audit partners influence accruals quality of their audited clients, this study reveals that the favorable female auditor effect on the client firm’s accruals quality holds constant for all the female audit partners’ specific attributes included in the researched models. This underscores that the mere presence of a female audit partner constrains earnings management and enhances, thereby, the client firm’s accruals quality.

This research supports regulators calling for the appointment of more women to the audit firms’ leading ranks (e.g. leadership).

The authors seek to analyze the impact of weak corporate governance by top executives of a firm on the firm's earnings reports. This research is meant to further emphasize the impact of co-opted executives on a firm, primarily through their impact on earnings management.

Using financial data from 11,473 firm-year observations, the authors utilize ordinary least squares (OLS), 2-stage IV regressions, propensity score matching (PSM) and entropy balancing to analyze the impact of a co-opted top management team on discretionary accruals and restatements.

The authors find empirical evidence that firms with weak corporate governance from top executives are more likely to manipulate reported earnings and have lower financial reporting quality. The authors also find that the effect of co-opted executives on earnings management is weaker when a chief executive officer's (CEO’s) incentives are not aligned with those of top executives, suggesting that executives prevent earnings management due to reputational concerns. Co-opted chief financial officers (CFOs) increase the magnitude of earnings management in a firm but are not solely responsible for the authors' results.

The authors' results suggest that the top executive team provides an important first defense in the prevention of earnings management and corporate wrongdoing. Co-option of the top executive team may be an important consideration when doing research into corporate governance.

The authors empirically investigate the association between acquisition, ownership structure and accrual earnings management (AEM) on real earnings management (REM) using Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-listed firms' context.

The authors' sample consists of 1,892 firm-year observations for the period from 2007–2017, and the authors adopt a panel data approach in investigating the interrelationships in this study. The authors employ different econometrics approach to test the authors' hypotheses.

The findings reveal that acquiring companies engage more in AEM if compared to REM. In terms of ownership structure, institutional ownership and state ownership mitigate the engagement in REM, whereas foreign ownership is found to be an ineffective mechanism in reducing engagement in REM. The authors report similar findings on ownership structure for AEM. The authors also find that the GCC firms engage more in REM when the firms engage in AEM, suggesting a complementary relation between these two earnings management techniques. These findings are robust after controlling for different aspects including any endogeneity issue in the authors' models.

The authors' research highlights the importance of understanding REM and AEM dynamics in GCC context. Also, the authors' findings on ownership structure suggest that GCC-listed firms can gain from institutional and state ownership which restricts earnings management, improving firm transparency and subsequently impacting firm performance.

This paper attempts to investigate the effect of corruption on the real and accrual earnings management of target firms in the process of mergers and acquisitions.

The sample includes target firms from the European area that participate in mergers or acquisitions announced during 2010–2020. The preliminary empirical part estimates the level of earnings management during the period two years before the deal's announcement to identify whether the sample follows the manipulation behavior that the literature suggests for target firms. The primary empirical analysis focuses on the impact of corruption on real and accrual-based earnings management proxies, employing regression models and two alternative proxies for corruption. The existing literature points out that the combination of low levels of corruption and an integrated legal system reduces earnings manipulation.

The findings provide strong evidence for systematic downwards accounting manipulation practices, whereas the findings for real earnings management are not significant. The findings of the main empirical part show that corruption is positively associated with accrual-based manipulation and negatively related to real earnings management. In essence, in economies with a high level of transparency, managers adopt the manipulation of operating activities as a less detectable practice of earnings management instead of engaging in accounting procedures.

This study contributes to the literature highlighting the diversification of these firms' manipulation strategies according to the national level's corruption status.

The purpose of this study is to examine the trade-off between accrual and real activity earnings manipulation by considering gender and punishment as one aspect of clawbacks.

To achieve the research objectives, experimental design research was used, involving 183 professional accountants in Indonesia. This was followed by interviews with board members of public companies in Indonesia.

After the adoption of clawbacks, the intention to manipulate accruals decreased more among women than among men. However, the possible unintended consequences of clawbacks, particularly an increase in real activity manipulation, did not differ between women and men.

There are still few studies that use experimental designs to examine the consequences of clawback. Our study is expected to provide a novel contribution to the literature on the consequences of clawbacks as we use an experimental method. Besides, previous research that tested the consequences of clawback, using both archival and experimental data, had not considered the gender aspect, thus prompting this study to fill the research gap related to the consequences of clawback adoption by including the gender variable.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of firm-specific investor sentiment on Brazilian companies’ accrual-based earnings management between 2010 and 2018. The paper aims to bring deeper insight into the relationship between the investor expectations and managers’ decision-making in an emerging market.

The authors use the quantitative approach and apply a multiple linear regression model to test the relationship among the abnormal accruals, the firm-specific investor sentiment index and the control variables. The final sample includes data from 175 companies, between 2010 and 2018.

These results reveal a negative association between firm-specific investor sentiment and accrual-based earnings management, which could mean that the risk propensity of managers to manipulate earnings increases when they face known losses in the capital market.

The research findings provide a valuable understanding of how emerging capital market expectations can influence managerial decisions, such as accrual-based earnings management. The geographical area of study was limited to only Brazil.

Previous studies on developed markets show that market-wide investor sentiment positively influences accrual-based earnings management. However, the present study shows that the firm-specific investor sentiment index has a significant and negative relationship with Brazilian companies’ earnings manipulation, whereas market sentiment indicates contradictory relationship in previous studies in the country.

El propósito de este estudio es investigar la influencia del sentimiento de los inversionistas a nivel de empresa en la manipulación contable de las empresas brasileñas entre 2010 y 2018. El documento pretende aportar una visión más profunda sobre la relación entre las expectativas de los inversores y la toma de decisiones de los gestores en un mercado emergente.

usamos el enfoque cuantitativo y aplicamos un modelo de regresión lineal múltiple para probar la relación entre las acumulaciones anormales, el índice de sentimiento de los inversores a nivel de empresa y las variables de control. La muestra final incluye datos de 175 empresas, entre 2010 y 2018.

Los resultados revelan una asociación negativa entre el sentimiento de los inversores a nivel de empresa y la manipulación contable basada em acumulaciones, lo que podría significar que la propensión al riesgo de los administradores a manipular las ganancias aumenta cuando enfrentan pérdidas conocidas en el mercado de capitales.

los resultados de la investigación proporcionan una valiosa comprensión de cómo las expectativas de los mercados de capitales emergentes pueden influir en las decisiones de gestión, como la manipulación contable basada en acumulaciones. El área geográfica de estudio se limitó únicamente a Brasil y, en consecuencia, los hallazgos y conclusiones del estudio tuvieron sus límites.

estudios anteriores sobre mercados desarrollados muestran que el sentimiento de los inversores a nivel de mercado influye positivamente en la manipulación contable. Sin embargo, el presente estudio muestra que el índice de sentimiento de los inversores a nivel de empresa tiene una relación significativa y negativa con la manipulación de las ganancias de las empresas brasileñas, mientras que el sentimiento del mercado indica una relación contradictoria en estudios anteriores en el país.

In this study, the author examines the effect of managers’ perception of product market competition on accruals and real earnings management.

The author develops a new text-based measure of the emphasis managers place on product market competition by conducting a textual analysis of firms’ 10-K filings. Using this measure, the author conducts a battery of econometric analyses and robustness checks to investigate the impact of this measure of product market competition on measures of accruals and real earnings management.

This study finds robust evidence that when management perceives more competitive threats, they are more likely to engage in accruals-based earnings manipulation but are less likely to engage in real earnings management activity. The author argues that these findings are due to managers’ career concerns enticing them to manage earnings via accrual when competition is high, but that greater product market competition discourages real earning management activity as it can diminish firms’ competitiveness.

The findings of this paper have important policy and practical implications since it signals that managers’ perceptions of product market competition is able to affect accounting choices, information environments and economic outcomes in firms.

This study develops a new text-based measure of managers’ perception of product market competition with the aid of GPT-4. The author then using this measure provides firm-level evidence on how this relates to earnings management.

This study explores whether hard regulatory control decreases the level of earnings management in local governments. The implementation of a new regulatory approach by Norwegian authorities provides the opportunity for an empirical study.

The authors adopt a two-stage strategy to investigate the existence of earnings management, using the Jones (1991) and modified Jones (Dechow et al., 1995) models to construct a random-effects model.

The authors test the hypothesis that, given decentralisation of control, there will be an increase in opportunistic financial reporting. This study's findings suggest that this is not the case, thereby indicating that a soft control regime does not diminish discipline in municipalities.

This study has practical implications for policymaking in the public sector. Its findings suggest that municipalities do not engage in more earnings management under a soft regulatory regime. Hence, other authorities should consider adopting a soft regulatory approach to controlling local governments and their financial reporting systems.

This study contributes to a growing body of literature regarding earnings management by local governments. The authors investigate a hypothesis previously untested in the literature by comparing the degree of earnings management under different regulatory control regimes.

Purpose: This paper aims to study the impact of adoption eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) on earnings management.

Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a sample of all firms listed on the Indonesian stock exchange, except for finance and real-estate sectors from 2012 to 2019, with a total of 2,560 firms–years with panel data analysis.

Findings: Four findings in this study are listed as follow. First, the surprising result is that accrual earnings management increase after the adoption of XBRL. Second, after the adoption of XBRL, there was an increase in real earnings management. Third, the results of the study prove that the use of Big 4 auditors will weaken the increase in real earnings management after the adoption of XBRL. Finally, this study shows that after the adoption of XBRL, it turns out that both accrual and real earnings management experienced an increase.

Originality/value: This study contributes to providing an evaluation note to IDX regulators that the goals they want to achieve have not been achieved. This study provides empirical evidence for the debate over whether the adoption of XBRL is beneficial.