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This paper empirically investigates whether trade openness (TO) in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) countries affects how banks might employ loan loss provisions (LLPs) to smooth out their earnings and how adopting the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) can mitigate it.

The analysis includes 78 commercial banks from five BRICS nations and spans 2014 through 2020. To test these hypotheses, the authors utilized a fixed-effect and two-step system panel generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimator.

TO positively affects income smoothing (earnings management) across BRICS commercial banks. The effect is clearer in banks that make financial reports under the IFRS. Path analysis reveals that the effect of TO is driven by nonperforming loans (NPLs). Additionally, the IFRS restricts earnings management in the BRICS banking sector when a better institutional environment is present. The authors found that accounting rules (IFRS) and enforcement (better institutional settings) interact to enhance earnings’ quality.

The relationship between TO and bank earnings management practices is important for understanding the complex interplay between trade and finance and ensuring financial stability, investor confidence and regulatory compliance. This study recommends better regulations and governance mechanisms for financial reports in emerging nations like BRICS. Additionally, macro-prudential regulators and banking supervisors should work closely to ensure transparent TO decisions with improved discipline, institutional quality and regulatory support to enhance bank stability.

The study finds evidence of bank income smoothing in the BRICS and introduces TO as a determinant. It also identifies the evolving role of IFRS in the presence of higher institutional quality and TO, thereby expanding the financial reporting literature.

This study empirically tests the use of loan loss provisions (LLPs) for earnings and capital smoothing when emphasis is laid on banks' riskiness and adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) in Nigeria.

Annual bank-level data are hand-extracted between 2007 and 2017 from annual reports of a sample 16 deposit money banks (DMBs), and analysed using appropriate panel regression models subsequent to a number of diagnostic tests including heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and cross-sectional dependence. The use of both reported LLPs (TLLP) and discretionary LLPs (DLLP) for earnings and capital management is tested to advance the practice in the literature.

Generally, the study finds that Nigerian DMBs manage capital via LLPs, while mixed results are obtained for earnings smoothing. However, during IFRS, Nigerian DMBs' management of capital is identifiable with TLLP, while smoothing of earnings is peculiar to DLLP. Additionally, evidence of the improvement in loan loss reporting quality expected during IFRS for riskier Nigerian DMBs, could not be attained. This is corroborated by the study's findings of the use of both TLLP and DLLP for earnings and capital management during IFRS by DMBs in solvency crisis against the only use of TLLP to manage capital found for the entire period.

The evidential capital and earnings lopsidedness may subject Nigerian DMBs' going-concern to a lot of questions.

The study sets a foremost record in the empirical test of managerial opportunistic behaviour embedded in earnings and capital concurrently while accounting for loan losses by all categories of Nigerian DMBs in terms of riskiness, following accounting regime change.

This study aims to examine whether International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) convergence process adds value to the accounting quality dimensions, including accruals quality, earnings smoothing, timely loss recognition and earnings persistence.

It analyzes the hypothesis of accounting quality changes in post-IFRS convergence by using the univariate and multivariate statistics. Particularly, the authors rely on panel data analyses using industrial companies’ data from 2008 until 2014, comprising 3,861 firm-years observations, in Indonesia.

The results indicate that there is no conclusive evidence that all accounting quality dimensions including accruals quality, earnings smoothing, timely loss recognition and earnings persistence increased in post-IFRS convergence.

The findings of this study may help regulators and standard setters to consider future adoption of IFRS, mostly to figure out the best “formula” to increase the usefulness of accounting information in post-IFRS convergence.

Rather than doing piecemeal work, the current study focuses on IFRS convergence on a broader aspect of accounting quality dimensions. It also focuses on the convergence process of IFRS as an alternative of full adoption, which has been the focus of many research studies.

The study investigated the relationship between residual audit fee and real income smoothening, proxied as real operating cash flow and production expenditure smoothing of non-financial firms in Nigeria.

The study relied on secondary data from annual financial statements of 75 firms in the non-financial sector from 2010 to 2019. The study estimated the residual audit fee using a modified model from several contexts to suit the Nigerian environment. The hypotheses were tested using the dynamic panel GMM estimation procedure.

The results showed a significant negative effect of residual audit fee on (real) operating cash flow smoothing and production expenditure smoothing of non-financial firms. The control variables showed mixed effects for the industry-related (firm size and profitability), auditor attribute (audit quality and audit report lag) and the board related (board size and board independence).

The firms included in the analysis were selected based on data availability from MachameRatios® and the occurrence of missing values for some of the variables used in the various estimation models may bias results.

The study identifies the nexus between RAF and real earnings management practices of non-financial firms; and shows the implication of fee payment to the overall conduct of the audit. More so, the mixed findings from the CVs suggest that in the context of developing economies, shareholders and capital markets regulators should be watchful of residual audit fees and utilise it as a gauge for audit quality and also an indicator of opportunism and weak internal control in the firm in the future assessments.

The implication of the study stems from its relevance to the capital market stability and the potential negative disastrous effect of corporate failure from earnings management practices.

The study develops a newly residual audit fee model to explore the effect of RAF on real income smoothing rather than the widely used models from prior literature; secondly, the focus on real activities manipulation may present additional evidence that applies to developing countries rather the widely used accrual measurement technique from an economic bonding perspective.

This study aims to examine the impact of income smoothing on the value of firms in a regulated security market, moderated by market risk. This is based on the prevalence of accounting scandals resulting in the collapse of firms which has been attributed to the opportunistic behaviors of managers.

The ex post facto research design was employed, and as such, data were gathered from secondary sources. The quantitative approach was also used in the study. Furthermore, the system generalized method of moments (Blundell–Bond) panel estimation technique was used for analyzing the data. Income smoothing was measured using the accrual based methods, while firm value was measured using share price.

The study found that income smoothing has a negative significant impact on firm value. The study also revealed that market risk is a significant variable that defines the relationship between income smoothing and firm value.

Testing the moderating effect of market risk on the relationship between income smoothing and firm value is unique to this study, particularly from a regulated security market and emerging economy.

Since the UK Companies Act 1981, different reporting standards have developed for different classes of company to reduce the reporting burden on non-listed companies. There are now different regimes for listed, large private, medium-sized, small and micro companies. This strategy raises the issue of whether earnings quality across the different classes of company is comparable. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper uses the smoothness of earnings to measure reporting quality across the different types of companies from 2006 to 2013, based on 514,000 observations. Smoothness is an indicator of poor quality.

The authors find that listed companies have the highest earnings quality, closely followed by small and micro companies. In contrast, large private and medium-sized companies have much lower earnings quality. Overall, the authors find companies which switch between reporting regimes have lower earnings quality. The authors also find that earnings quality is not affected by the small company exemption from audit.

Companies filing abbreviated accounts are excluded since they do not file an income statement. The recent revisions to UK GAAP (FRS 102 and FRS 105) are not examined due to insufficient data.

The Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) strategy of reducing the financial reporting and auditing obligations for small companies seems not to have significantly affected earnings quality. However, the FRC may need to review the reporting requirements of large private and medium-sized companies and also the option of companies to switch between reporting regimes; in these settings earnings quality appears to be weaker.

The paper studies the effect of earnings quality across the different reporting regimes in the UK. Novel and important features of the study are that the sample covers a wide variety of small and micro companies which have not been analyzed previously; the results are disaggregated by year, for assurance that the results are not driven by a single rogue year; and the authors also address the small company exemption from audit, and the flexibility of non-listed companies to switch between regimes.

Discretionary accruals are earnings quality proxies that illustrate that the greater the value of discretionary accruals, the greater the practice of earnings management and vice versa. High-quality financial reports (especially earnings quality) are expected to help investors and potential investors to make decisions. This study analyses the factors that affect earnings quality, such as pre-managed earnings, liquidity and efficiency. Furthermore, the authors identify the moderating effect of the governance mechanisms proxied by the proportion of independent commissioners in conventional commercial banks listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange.

This study uses 226 banking data in the pre-corona crisis period 2013 until 2019. The data were analyzed using EViews 10 for hypothesis and MS Excel for a differential test.

The results show that pre-managed earnings, liquidity and efficiency affect earnings quality. The governance mechanisms can moderate liquidity and efficiency on earnings quality, while pre-managed earnings cannot be moderated. The different bank categories (BUKU) of earnings management mechanisms are shown for each BUKU (BUKU 1, 3 and 4 perform earnings management by increasing earnings, BUKU 2 lowering earnings). Another thing is information on the earnings quality between BUKU 2 with BUKU 3 and BUKU 4 because of differences in capital and bank operating coverage regulations.

Further research expects to analyze the factors affecting banking earnings quality concerning applying IFRS 9 (PSAK 71) in Indonesia. Future researchers expect to apply mixed methods to verify the financial statement data and provide comprehensive discussion and genuine insight from their study. Future research requires more samples from companies or an international scale (cross country) to obtain maximum results and be generally accepted.

This study implies that managers should have more control over pre-managed earnings and bank liquidity as manager's incentive to do earnings smoothing. Managers should also pay attention to cost-efficiency and effective implementation of governance mechanisms to maximize earnings quality. This study also implies that policymakers can encourage commercial banks to apply more prudential principles in terms of a reserve for failed loans to minimize earnings management in banking.

The significance of this study revealed in the discussion of the difference test between bank core capital categories (BUKU) and its relation to earnings quality.

The article investigates the patterns of asset impairment recognition in search of signs of “big bath” earnings management practices across an internationally diversified sample of public companies. It also elucidates the incentives that may underlie such practices and explores possible safeguards embedded in the existing corporate governance mechanisms.

The article applied static panel and binary logit models to an international firm-level panel dataset of 1045 public companies observed between 2003 and 2018.

Our empirical results suggest that recognition of asset impairment has no determinate impact on earnings volatility. Investigating the possibility of “big bath” earnings management practices, the authors found no impact of asset impairment recognition on total senior executive compensation in firms, which pay performance-based remuneration. The quality of corporate governance has appeared to impact the firms’ intertemporal proclivity to recognize asset impairment with those having the more entrenched and management-controlled boards being more likely to time impairment recognition by delaying it during exceptionally good and exceptionally bad years. While generally unlikely, recognition of asset impairment in a period with a recorded negative operating performance is found to be closely associated with key executive departures.

The article corroborates the salient role of corporate governance mechanisms in shaping the intertemporal patterns of asset impairment recognition. The possible remedies to the phenomenon should be derived therefrom.

This paper explores the relationship between earnings management and firms' value through the moderating effect of the missing elements – corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and state ownership in Russian companies. The main argument of the paper is that CSR disclosure can be used as a mitigating mechanism to weaken the negative relationship between earnings manipulation and market value. Additionally test whether state ownership is an important moderating factor in this relationship are conducted as state has always played an important role in the emerging Russian market.

The hypotheses are tested on panel data for 223 publicly listed Russian firms for the period 2012–2018. A number of robustness tests are used to check the obtained results for consistency. Following previous research GMM method is employed to address endogeneity concerns.

Supported by stakeholder theory, it is observed that firms that disclosed more CSR information experience a weaker negative relationship between earnings management and market value because investors and other stakeholders positively evaluate a positive CSR image. This negative effect of earnings management on market value is even weaker for state-owned companies as market participants appreciate involvement of state-owned companies in CSR activities and place greater expectations on these firms to be responsible without clear understanding whether these actions are “window dressing” for this type of companies or not.

The study results provide new insights into the relation between earnings management, firm's value, CSR disclosure and state ownership in emerging-market firms. The paper highlight the importance of considering country-specific factors, such as state ownership, while analysing the market reaction on CSR disclosure and earnings management since the institutional peculiarities may help to explain differences in the obtained results.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the influence of the informational environment on the relevance of accounting information in companies traded in stock exchanges of emerging markets.

For this purpose, the authors calculated indicators based on figures derived from the financial statements and variables that sought to capture the influence of the economic and institutional environment. The sample consisted of publicly traded companies from 20 countries classified as emerging by Standard & Poors. Macroeconomic information was obtained through the International Country Risk Guide database. The analysis period ranged from 2004 to 2013, excluding missing data, variables considered as outliers, besides the exclusion of data from companies that presented negative equity.

It was observed that the financial variables presented signs consistent with the literature, except for the price-to-book variable and the asset change variable. The inclusion of variables related to the accounting informational environment offered evidence that the more opaque the accounting environment in the country, the lesser the ability of the profits to portray the variations of stock returns. The variable that captured the adoption of international standards was consistent with expectations, i.e. the adoption of international standards would increase the quality of accounting information, showing a positive signal. Moreover, the variable aggressiveness of the earnings was statistically significant and negative, consistent with the literature.

The variables earnings smoothing and aversion to losses did not show the expected behaviour though, highlighting the possible limitations of these proxies used to capture the opacity of the earnings.

When institutional moderators were included, it was observed that the adoption of the IFRS standards positively affected the relationship, which is more relevant when the accounting figures were under its aegis. Recently, countless nations’ transition to international accounting standards has been justified by the need to use high-quality reporting standards. The research sought to contribute to strengthen this dimension, presenting evidence that the dummy variable included to capture the adoption of international standards had a positive effect on the relationship.