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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between managers’ short-term, quarterly earnings forecast characteristics and earnings management through real activities manipulation.

Using a propensity-score matched sample from 2000 to 2015, the author examines whether, compared to non-issuers, firms issuing short-term earnings forecasts exhibit abnormal levels of earnings management through the manipulation of real activities such as acceleration of sales, changes in shipment schedules and delaying R&D and maintenance expenditures.

The finding of this study suggests that firms actually engage in less real activities manipulation when they provide short-term management earnings forecasts. This result does not support the practitioners’ criticism that providing short-term management earnings forecasts increases earnings management. Instead, it suggests that providing management earnings forecasts can reduce information asymmetry between managers and external shareholders, thereby constraining managers’ opportunistic behaviors.

Practitioners have expressed concerns that issuing earnings forecasts may foster managerial myopia, therefore, increasing earnings management. However, recent empirical study found evidence that management earnings forecast mitigates accrual-based earnings management, which is inconsistent with practitioners’ view. This study hence aims to provide timely evidence to this debate by examining the relation between management earnings forecasts and real activities manipulation.

The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to examine the incremental contribution of product market fluidity (P_THREAT), another measure of competition from that of the Herfindahl index (H_COMP) and (2) to examine how a research and development (R&D) real activities earnings management strategy to meet an earnings target is influenced by competition.

Using a linear probability model, we test whether P_THREAT is incremental to the H_COMP competition measure and whether it influences the likelihood of firms using abnormally low R&D real activities earnings management to meet an earnings target.

We find that P_THREAT is incrementally informative to the commonly used Herfindahl measure of competition in predicting abnormally low R&D real activities earnings management activities. This finding is consistent with the notion of examining P_THREAT because the Herfindahl index alone may be incomplete, depending on the product makeup of a company. The negative coefficient suggests that reducing discretionary spending on R&D in the short run could have a detrimental effect on long-term profits because bypassed R&D opportunities would put firms at a disadvantage with their competitors' R&D efforts. In contrast, we find that firms are more likely to use R&D activities earnings management as a mechanism to meet an earnings target when P_THREAT is high. This suggests that when high competitive pressure exists, firms are more likely to use abnormally low R&D as a mechanism to meet an earnings target.

We specifically focus on R&D activities earnings management because our primary competition measure, P_THREAT, captures changes in rival firms' products relative to the firm. Because R&D is primarily what drives product change, R&D is the type of real activities earnings management that is most relevant to our competition measure. Hence, this study contributes to the literature by examining how competition influences the likelihood of firms possibly engaging in R&D activities earnings management and meeting earnings targets in the presence of P_THREAT competition.

This study aims to examine the ability of investors to process signs of real activities manipulations at bidder firms in the quarters leading to the announcement of a merger. It further provides a supplementary explanation for the post-merger underperformance puzzle.

Examining a sample of cash-only, stock swap and mixed mergers completed between 1980 and 2011, it was found that bidder firms increase the use of real activities manipulation in the quarters leading up to the merger announcements. Using average abnormal stock return method, it is shown that the short-term positive effect of real activities manipulation on share prices is stronger than accrual-based earnings management.

While bidders are able to escape investors’ scrutiny in the short run, it is not the case in the long run. It was found that bidders’ long-run stock performance, measured by matched buy-and-hold stock returns, is inversely related to their pre-announcement level of earnings management. This paper contributes to the literature on earnings management by considering how real activities manipulations affect stock prices in mergers and acquisitions.

This study tests whether real activities manipulation, in addition to accrual-based earnings management, explains the underperformance puzzle of the acquiring firms in M&As. Zang (2012) argues that there is a greater likelihood for firms to engage in real activities manipulation, especially when firms are constrained in their use of accrual-based earnings management owing to heightened scrutiny or overuse in prior years.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether audit quality influence real earnings management activities using a sample of UK listed firms that have strong incentives to manage earnings upward through meeting past year’s earnings as a benchmark in the post-adoption period of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

The authors use a sample of 4,774 firm-year observations of UK listed firms during the period 2005–2018. Univariate and multivariate analyses have been conducted to test the association after controlling for firm characteristics and institutional variables.

The study reports that the presence of Big 4 auditors is significantly and positively related with greater levels of sales and discretionary expenses manipulation. Though the authors do not find any conclusive evidence on production costs manipulation, the aggregated measure of real earnings management shows a significant positive association with the presence of Big 4 auditors.

The study implies that managers who have incentives to manage earnings upward around the UK firms take advantage of the accounting flexibility in defining policies while reducing information asymmetry among the investors to signal better future performance. The approach to detect earnings manipulation as described in the auditing standards fails to limit the managerial use of real activities due to limited scope and unclear guidance. Thus, due to the significant impact on public policies, the results should, therefore, be of interest to the regulators and standard setters.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines the association between audit quality and real earnings management for the UK all-purpose operational firms in sampled data that just meet past year’s earnings as a benchmark in the post-IFRS period.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of managers’ incentive bonuses on both accrual and real earnings management.

First, the authors investigate the relationship between managers’ bonuses and both accrual earnings management (measured by a modified Jones model) and real earnings management (measured by Roychowdhury proxies). Next, the authors examine whether management has any preferences for earnings management methods to enhance its bonuses. Finally, the authors investigate the possible effects of earnings management on future operating performance. The sample consists of compositional data in the period from 2006 to 2012.

The authors find a negative relationship between real earnings management and managers’ bonuses and detect that managers prefer to use accrual earnings management to earn more bonuses. The results also show that real earnings management will reduce a firm’s performance in future periods, and on the other hand that increasing managers’ bonuses links to improvement of the firm’s future performance. The results suggest that managers are typically aware of the negative effects of real earnings management on the firm’s future performance and thus prefer to improve the firm’s performance in securing their bonuses when their ability to manage accruals is constrained.

The implications of this paper provide further evidence on how managers’ bonuses affect their discretion in using accrual and real earnings management. This finding is important to investors and regulators.

This study aims to investigate the occurrence of pre-merger earnings management for a sample of 197 stock- and cash-financed UK acquirers between 1990 and 2009. It also examines the earnings management behaviour around the change in the Corporate Governance Code in 2003 based on the Higgs recommendations.

Mean and median accrual- and real-based manipulation are examined in the period before the announcement of a merger and acquisition. These are compared across stock and cash acquirers as well as before and after the implementation of the Higgs recommendations. Logistic regressions are also run to examine accrual- and real-based manipulation across stock and cash acquirers after controlling for variables that may affect the acquisition type.

The study found some evidence of upward pre-merger accrual-based earnings management by stock-financed acquirers, which is in line with the findings of Botsari and Meeks (2008). Furthermore, no significant changes were found in the post-Higgs period, which indicates that the recommendations put forth by Higgs may not have been successful in mitigating earnings management. The evidence also shows that cash bidders engage in pre-merger real earnings manipulation through lower discretionary expenses, possibly to enhance cash availability for the bid.

The findings in this study confirm earnings management exists around mergers and acquisitions and provide some evidence that the recommendations set out in the Higgs Report do not appear to have mitigated earnings management activities. This is of interest to regulators as well as investors and academicians.

This provides the first analysis in the UK examining the use of real-based earnings management activities by UK acquirers. It also extends prior research around corporate governance changes that occurred in the UK.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which real earnings management (REM) is used in Jordan to meet zero or previous year's earnings, and how this impacts the subsequent operating performance of Jordanian firms.

The study used a sample of 98 Jordanian listed firms over the 2010–2018 period. To test the research hypotheses, which are formulated in accordance with both, agency theory and signalling theory, multivariate regression is performed using a pooled OLS estimation. Additionally, a two-step dynamic generalised method of moment (GMM) model has been estimated to address any concerns regarding the potential occurrence of endogeneity issues.

The results show that Jordanian firms that meet zero or last year's earnings tend to exhibit evidence of real activities manipulations. More specifically, suspect firms show unusually low abnormal discretionary expenses and unusually high abnormal production costs. Further, consistent with the signalling earnings management argument, the authors find that abnormal real-based activities intended to meet zero earnings or previous year's earnings potentially improve the subsequent operating performance of Jordanian firms. This implies that REM is not totally opportunistic, but it can be used to enhance the subsequent operating performance of Jordanian firms. Our findings are robust to alternative proxies and endogeneity concerns.

The findings have several implications for policymakers, regulators, audit professionals and investors in their attempts to constrain REM practices to enhance financial reporting quality in Jordan. Managing earnings by reducing discretionary expenses appeared to be the most convenient way to manipulate earnings in Jordan. It provides flexibility in terms of time and the amount of spending. The empirical evidence, therefore, reiterates the crucial necessity to refocus the efforts of internal and external auditors on limiting this type of manipulation to reduce the occurrence of REM activities and enhance the subsequent operating performance of listed firms in Jordan. Drawing on Al-Haddad and Whittington (2019), the evidence also urges regulators and standards setters to develop a more effective enforcement mechanism for corporate governance provisions in Jordan to minimise the likelihood of REM incidence.

This study contributes to the body of the accounting literature by providing the first empirical evidence in the Middle East region overall on the use of REM to meet zero or previous year earnings by Jordanian firms. Moreover, the study is the first to empirically examine the relationship between REM and Jordanian firms' future operating performance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of independent audit committees in constraining real earnings management. This study examines the relationships between audit committee characteristics and real activities manipulation.

US firms with stronger incentives to undertake real earnings management are selected as a sample. Regressions are run for the empirical analyses.

It is found that audit committee members' additional directorships are positively associated with real earnings management measured by abnormal cash flows from operations, abnormal discretionary expenses and abnormal production costs, suggesting that audit committees with high additional directorships are less effective in constraining real earnings management. The findings are consistent with the notion that audit committee members' busyness impairs their monitoring effectiveness.

This study extends the extant research on audit committees' oversight of real earnings management by using refined research design and updated data. This study also provides further evidence on how audit committee members' additional directorships affect their ability to oversee both accrual and real earnings management.

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.

This study aims to investigate two important research questions. First, this research examines the impact of real earnings management on investment inefficiency of the non-financial listed firms in Pakistan. Second, this research further explores the moderating role of short-term debt on the nexus between real earnings management and investment inefficiency. This study attempts to highlight an important research problem i.e. the jinx of real earnings management from the context of an emerging economy.

This study employs the data from non-financial listed firms in Pakistan over the period from 2008 to 2018. The study uses panel data methodologies with firm and year fixed-effects to examine the proposed hypotheses. The results are robust to the use of sensitivity analysis, different estimation techniques and endogeneity issues (using two-stage least squares (2SLS) and generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques).

The results of the research are twofold. First, consistent with the theoretical arguments, the findings reveal that real earnings management increases investment inefficiency and results in over-investments by the firms. Second, short-term debt attenuates the relationship between real earnings management and investment inefficiency. It implies that a higher level of short-term debt weakens the adverse effects of real earnings management on the investment efficiency of the firm.

This study offers original findings on the issues pertaining to the quality of accounting and financial reporting in an emerging economy like Pakistan, where the implementation of regulations is weak in the corporate world and management frequently exploits shareholders' wealth for the short-term benefits.