This study investigates the effect of analyst coverage on both accrual-based and real earnings management. Regarding accrual-based earnings management, I find that firms followed by more analysts engage in less accruals management and that more experienced analysts seem to be more effective in constraining accruals management, consistent with the role of analysts as external monitors to manager...

Title of Dissertation: An Alternative Measure to Detect Intentional Earnings Management through Discretionary Accruals Salma S. Ibrahim, 2005 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Oliver Kim, Accounting and Information Assurance Department This study proposes an alternative measure of discretionary accruals that can be used in testing for intentional earnings management. Prior research has shown ...

This paper hypothesizes that more active informed trading and intense information production help investors detect the low persistence of accruals, and consequently reduce the magnitude of accruals mis-pricing. Applying both the Mishkin (1983) and the hedge-portfolio tests to subsamples sorted on the basis of a two-way classification – accruals and one of the information production measures, we...

The accruals anomaly—the negative relationship between accounting accruals and subsequent stock returns—has been well documented in the academic and practitioner literatures for almost a decade. To the extent that this anomaly represents market inefficiency, one would expect sophisticated investors to learn about it and arbitrage the anomaly away. Yet, we show that the accruals anomaly still pe...

SYNOPSIS: Earnings management remains a popular topic of debate and discussion among investors, regulators, analysts, and the public. One mechanism that might mitigate earnings management is auditors’ industry expertise. Using a large sample of clients of Big 6 auditors, this research examines the association between auditor industry expertise, measured in terms of both auditor market share in ...

Sloan (1996) is the first to document the accruals anomaly, the negative relation between accruals and subsequent stock returns. In this paper I investigate the effects of the recent and prominent adoption of fair-value accounting on the market valuation of accruals. Using a sample of firm-years from 2003 to 2005, I find that investors rationally price different earnings components when setting...

We investigate whether firms “lean against the wind”, i.e., manage earnings upward to offset aggregate (market wide) undervaluation, by examining how firm-specific measures of earnings management correlate with aggregate market conditions. Leaning against the wind has been proposed by prior research as a behavioral explanation for a negative contemporaneous relation and a positive predictive re...

This study examines the effect of investor sentiment on the accruals anomaly. We find that for small stocks mispricing per unit of accruals is greater in high sentiment periods as compared with low sentiment periods. This result is consistent with the notion that in high sentiment periods individual investors pay less attention toward understanding the accruals and cash flow components of earni...

Themove from cash to accruals accounting bymany governments is viewed as an aspect of an ongoing New Public Management agenda designed to achieve a more business-like and performance-focused public sector. Proponents argue that accruals accounting provides more appropriate information for decision makers and ultimately leads to a more efficient and effective public sector. The transition from c...

Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize based on q-theory that firms optimally adjust their accruals in response to discount rate changes. A higher discount rate means less profitable investments and lower accruals, and a lower discount rate means more profitable investments and higher accruals. Our evidence supports this optimal investment hypothesis: (1) adding an ...