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A long-time ethical issue in financial accounting is earnings management. Two popular ways that earnings are managed include use of accruals (Kothari et al., 2016) and real activities management (RM). This study examines the association between RM and short selling and an association between short sellers and RM behavior related to earnings management. Instead of using accruals, RM is accomplished by timing investment or financing decisions and thereby alter reported earnings. Our results show that short sellers avoid targeting firms with a high level of RM, but this only holds for those firms that just meet analysts’ forecasts. This result suggests that short sellers interpret RM as a signal used by companies to convey their “good news” and confidence in their future performance. On the other hand, the authors document that heavily shorted firms engage in a lower amount of RM, which is consistent with the notion that short selling plays an external disciplinary role in constraining firms’ RM behavior for earnings management. This chapter would be of interest to anyone concerned with earnings management, such as financial market analysts, investors, academic researchers, and, in particular, regulators, who are involved in setting rules on short selling.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms manage the total value of stock option grants downward after the implementation of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) 123R to reduce their reported option expenses.

All Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 1500 firms with available stock option data in 2004 and 2006 are included in the analysis. The authors analyze if the total value of options granted, the per share fair value of options granted, the number of options granted as well as each individual input assumption have changed from the pre-SFAS 123R (i.e. 2004) to the post-SFAS 123R (i.e. 2006) period. We compare post-SFAS123R option pricing assumptions and per share fair value of options granted with their respective expected values to verify the results. We also analyze whether SFAS 123R has differential effects on firms which chose to disclose option expense only in footnotes (“disclosing firms”) versus firms which voluntarily recognized option expense (“recognizing firms”) prior to SFAS 123R.

The results show that after SFAS 123R, the total fair value of stock options granted for disclosing firms declined significantly. The decrease appears to result from managerial discretion over volatility and dividend yield assumptions as well as the reduction in the number of options granted. The evidence suggests that firms engage in not only assumption-based manipulations but also real activities to lower reported stock option expenses. It was also found that disclosing firms lower the total fair value of stock options granted to a greater extent than recognizing firms.

This study adds to prior literature that examines the opportunistic incentives for managers to use discretion in reporting stock option expenses. This study contributes to the earnings management literature by providing another example of manipulating earnings through real activities. Finally, our study should be of interest to regulators and investors.