Real Earnings Management

One of the major challenges faced by major firms is the risk of financial instability and ultimately financial bankruptcy. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to predict bankruptcy based on real Earning management models and the accrual Earning management of companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange. The research method is descriptive-applied and is a correlation study. The time domain of research was between 1382 and 1395, with a sample of 110 companies (65 bankrupt and 65 non-bankrupt companies) selected from the list of companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange. Logistic regression model was used to test the research hypotheses. In general, the findings of the research hypothesis test show that the predictive power of bankruptcy models based on real profit management models and accruals management of companies accepted in Tehran Stock Exchange is significant. Therefore, it can be stated that the amount of real earning management and accrual earnings management affect the bankruptcy of the investigated companies.

The present study's main objective is to assess the relationship between corporate reputation and different types of earnings management (accrual-based, real, and reductive earnings management). In other words, this paper attempts to figure out whether corporate reputation can contribute to the amount of accrual-based, real, and reductive earnings management or not. This paper's method is descriptive-correlational based on published information from listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2012-2018 with a selected sample of 187 firms (1309 observations). The method applied for hypothesis testing is linear regression using panel data. The obtained results from hypothesis testing show that corporate reputation has a negative and significant relationship with accrual-based, real, and reductive earnings management, which means highly-reputed firms, are less likely to embark on different earnings management types. Since this paper analyzes the emergent financial markets, like Iran, with extremely competitive audit markets to determine the effect of corporate reputation on different types of earnings management of listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange, it can provide useful information in this field.

Examining the theoretical foundations of earnings management shows that companies have stronger incentive to use earnings management at the pre-bankruptcy stage. Consequently, accounting-based determinants retrieved from financial statements may be biased factors for financial distress. In this paper, we investigate whether taking into account real earnings management improves specification of accounting-based financial distress prediction models. We test whether the inclusion of such attributes in bankruptcy prediction models improves their predictive ability. We use a sample of listed manufacturing companies in the Iran Stock Exchange during 2008 - 2017. Our findings suggest that the inclusion of earnings management significantly increases the predictive ability of accounting-based financial distress prediction models. Our results show that the real earnings management can provide predictive signals concerning a financial distress and that an abnormal cash flow which proxies for real earnings management can play a relevant role in early warnings of financial distress. These results are of interest to market participants, auditors, regulating authorities, banks and other financial institutions that are interested in financial distress assessment

A manager’s personality and psychological attributes may influence his or her performance, thereby affecting the quality of financial reporting by companies. On the one hand, today there is an increasing requirement for protecting the interests of investors as providers of investment and the most important group of accounting information and financial report users. The development of audit committees is among the mechanisms expected to be effective in protecting the interests of different groups of accounting information and financial report users. In order to act effectively, an audit committee must be independent. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the role played by the independence of audit committee members as a quality of an audit committee to identify how it may moderate the relationship between managers' narcissism and real earnings management in the firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) using a statistical sample consisting of 642 observations (year-firm) over the period 2013-2018. The findings obtained through hypothesis testing using statistical analysis of panel data suggest that independence of audit committee members does not moderate the relationship between CEO's narcissism and real earnings management through abnormal cash flow, real earnings management through abnormal production, and real earnings management through abnormal discretionary expenses. Thus, the independence of audit committee members as a moderator cannot moderate the relationship between CEO's narcissism and real earnings management

Earning is one of the most important items of financial statements. Sometimes managers manipulate and distort earning reports to maximize their own benefits, reach a certain profitability level, or achieve a certain corporate objective. Firms with a low level of debt tend to have few or no restrictive clauses in their debt contracts, which allow them to operate with less concern about breaching these contracts and give less incentive to managers to engage in earning management reports through accrual manipulation. However, when firms accumulate large amounts of debt, the relationship between debt and accrual-based earnings management tends to get reversed. In firms with large debts, managers are incentivized to report good earnings as they are under pressure to avoid the penalties of violating the restrictive clauses in their debt contracts. In the absence of scientific and empirical evidence regarding this issue, the present study examined the nonlinear relationship between debt structure and real and accrual-based earnings management. For this purpose, the data pertaining to a sample of 130 firms listed on the Tehran stock exchange from 2014 to 2019 were collected and analyzed. The results of multivariate regression analysis showed a nonlinear relationship between debt structure and accrual-based earnings management. A non-linear relationship was also found between current debt structure and real earnings management. However, the results could not confirm the presence of a non-linear relationship between total debt structure and real earnings management