Earnings management är ett fenomen som enligt studier har ökat i omfattning under senare tid tack vare förändringar av redovisningsprinciper. Detta har gett företag möjligheten att med ökad subjektivitet bedöma värdet på sina tillgångar, vilket kan utnyttjas för att manipulera redovisning och justera resultat i önskad riktning. Den här studien syftar primärt till att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan variablerna earnings management och pressade resultat bland de noterade bolagen på Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, även kallad “Stockholmsbörsen”. Det sekundära syftet är att undersöka om detta eventuella samband är vanligare förekommande bland mindre företag samt om någon bransch är överrepresenterad. En kvantitativ metod har använts där data från bolagens årsredovisningar har hämtats och sedan granskats. Efter det har en analytisk generalisering gjorts av resultaten som visar på att företag i större utsträckning tenderar att bedriva earnings management under perioder där de upplever pressade resultat, i motsats till perioder där de upplever normala resultat. Studien visar också att detta inte är vanligare förekommande på någon speciell börslista eller inom någon specifik bransch, utan att företagen är representerade i likvärdig utsträckning. I studien visade det sig att ett vanligt verktyg för att bedriva earnings management är att göra stora engångsnedskrivningar av goodwill. Detta möjliggjordes år 2005 då IFRS 13 infördes i EU, vilket resulterade i att goodwillposten årligen nedskrivningsprövas istället för att som tidigare avskrivas planmässigt. En kritisk diskussion förs med slutsatsen att resultaten är delvis applicerbara på den studerade populationen och säger något om närliggande fall. Slutligen diskuteras studiens bidrag där konklusionen är att resultaten adderar till samt stärker tidigare forskning. / Earnings management is a phenomenon whose scope of usage has expanded in recent time due to changes in accounting principles, according to studies. These changes have given companies the possibility to use subjective judgment to a higher degree when valuing their assets. This can be utilized to manipulate accounts and tweak results in desired direction. The purpose of this study is primarily to investigate if there is a connection between the variables earnings management and pressured results among the listed companies on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, also knowned as “Stockholmsbörsen”. The secondary purpose is to investigate if this possible connection is more common among smaller companies and if there is any industry that is overrepresented. A quantitative method has been used where data has been collected from the companies’ websites and later reviewed. An analytic generalization has then been applied on the results that show that companies tend to engage in earnings management in greater magnitude when they are experiencing times with pressured results, in contrary to when they experience times with normal results. The study also shows that it’s not more commonly practiced on any particular stock market list or in some particular industry. The companies are rather equivalently represented along the scope of industries and stock market lists. The study shows that a common tool to engage in earnings management is to make big one time impairments of goodwill. This was made possible 2005 when IFRS 13 was implemented in the EU, which resulted in that the goodwill account where to be impairment tested every year instead of the former principle that used linear depreciation. A critical discussion is held with the conclusion that the results of the study are partly applicable on the studied population and says something about nearby cases. Finally there is a discussion about the contribution of the study with the conclusion that the findings adds something to and strengthens past findings.

Under Accounting Statement CPC 38, from 2010 on Brazilian companies started adopting accounting standards correspondent to IAS 39 regarding hedge accounting, whose disclosure is optional and, in cash flow hedge operations, may avoid losses disclosure in the income statements due to deferred values in other comprehensive income (OCI), promoting better earnings disclosure. In this scenario, by means of statistical models we investigate whether firm\'s financial exposure to currency risk and the high exchange rate depreciation environment promote the deferral of losses on firm\'s OCI and, in addition to the tax deferral on exchange gains and losses, the hedge accounting choice for 379 Brazilian listed companies between 2010- 2017. Our results show that firms\' high leverage in foreign currency, the high exchange rate variation on country level and the tax deferral choice influence positively the hedge accounting choice and, consequently, reduce the disclosure of losses on income statements, evidencing potential earnings management activity, since OCI\'s balances are not entirely understood by analysts and investors (even the most sophisticated). Our paper contributes to the disclosure, accounting choice and earnings management theories, highlighting the claim for enhancement of financial instruments accounting standards on uniformity and comparability. / Com o CPC 38, a partir de 2010 as companhias brasileiras passaram a adotar as normas contábeis correspondentes ao IAS 39 no tocante à contabilidade de hedge, cuja divulgação é facultativa e, especificamente em relação ao hedge de fluxo de caixa, pode diferir a divulgação de perdas cambiais em outros resultados abrangentes (ORA) e, consequentemente, promover o disclosure de melhores resultados. Nesse cenário, por meio de modelos estatísticos o estudo investiga se a alta exposição à variação cambial em um ambiente de alta depreciação da taxa de câmbio resulta em diferimento de perdas em ORA e, em conjunto com o diferimento da tributação da variação cambial, promove a escolha da contabilidade de hedge para 379 companhias abertas brasileiras no período de 2010 a 2017. Os resultados evidenciam que a alta alavancagem em moeda estrangeira, a alta depreciação do câmbio e o diferimento da tributação impactam positivamente a escolha pela contabilidade de hedge e, consequentemente, reduzem a divulgação de perdas cambiais no resultado, apontando a existência de gerenciamento de resultados, já que os saldos em ORA não são corretamente interpretados pelos analistas e investidores, mesmo os mais sofisticados. O estudo contribui para as teorias de disclosure, de escolha contábil e de gerenciamento de resultados, e aponta para a necessidade de aprimoramento das normas contábeis relativas a instrumentos financeiros em termos de uniformidade e comparabilidade.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-12-20T16:38:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Kélim Bernardes Sprenger_.pdf: 631926 bytes, checksum: 252828806d3d6757ac0475db132cf8b0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-20T16:38:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Kélim Bernardes Sprenger_.pdf: 631926 bytes, checksum: 252828806d3d6757ac0475db132cf8b0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-11-18 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / UNISINOS - Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos / Tendo em vista que o resultado de uma entidade impacta na decisão dos investidores, no mercado e na administração da empresa, determinados gestores podem se utilizar da discricionariedade no processo de mensuração e evidenciação contábil para gerenciar os resultados. Visando compreender as circunstâncias que estão atreladas à essa prática no Brasil, esta pesquisa teve como objetivo analisar a relação entre as características do Chief Executive Officer (CEO) e o gerenciamento de resultados em empresas listadas na BM&FBovespa. Para a consecução deste estudo, foram coletadas as informações do CEO de cada empresa, como idade, gênero, experiência anterior, nível de escolaridade e área de formação, bem como sua forma de eleição e os cargos por ele ocupados, no período de 2010 a 2015, por meio do Formulário de Referência. Para detectar o gerenciamento de resultados, foram utilizados os modelos de Jones (1991) e de Jones Modificado (1995), cujos resíduos representam os accruals discricionários, vistos pela literatura como proxy do gerenciamento de resultados. Dessa forma, para cada empresa e em cada ano, foram estimados os accruals discricionários e estes foram considerados como a variável dependente de uma regressão múltipla elaborada para estabelecer uma relação entre as características do CEO e o gerenciamento de resultados. Os dados foram organizados e estimados em poll de cross section. Os principais resultados indicam que quanto maior a medida de remuneração por desempenho (MRD) do CEO, menor será o uso de accruals discricionários na empresa e, consequentemente, haverá menor nível de gerenciamento de resultados. Também se verificou que há relação entre a idade e o gênero do CEO com o gerenciamento de resultados, indicando que quanto maior a idade do CEO, menor é o gerenciamento de resultados e que os homens fazem mais uso dos accruals discricionários. Identificou-se ainda que as empresas cujo controle acionário é estrangeiro estão menos relacionadas com o gerenciamento de resultados. / Considering that the outcome of a company affects the investors’ decision in the market and in the company’s management, some managers may use the discretion in the measurement and accounting disclosure process to manage the results. To further understand the circumstances linked to this practice in Brazil, this study aimed to analyze the relationship between the characteristics of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and earnings management in companies listed on the BM&FBovespa. To achieve this study, each company CEO’s information was collected, such as age, gender, previous experience, level of education and area, as well as their form of election and positions held by them in the period 2010-2015, through the Formulário de Referência (reference form). In order to detect earnings management, Jones model (1991) and Jones Modified model (1995) were used, which residues represent discretionary accruals, considered in the literature as earnings management’ proxy. Thus, for each company and each year, discretionary accruals were estimated and considered as a dependent variable in a multiple regression designed to establish a relationship between the CEO characteristics and earnings management. Data were organized and estimated at pool of cross-section. The main results indicate that the higher the payment for performance measurement (MRD) of the CEO, the lower the use of discretionary accruals. Consequently, there will be a lower level of earnings management. It was also found that there is a relationship between the age and gender of the CEO with the management results, indicating that the higher the age of the CEO, the lower the earnings management, and that men make more use of discretionary accruals. It also identified that companies with foreign stock control are less related to earnings management.

This study investigates the effects of the organizational ethical context (ethical climate and ethical culture) in Chinese enterprises on accounting professionals’ perceptions of earnings management, organizational-professional conflict (OPC) and affective organizational commitment (OC). We also test the effects of Machiavellianism on these factors, and the interactive effects of Machiavellianism and ethical context on OPC and OC. The findings, based on responses from 89 accounting professionals employed by Chinese enterprises at staff, supervisor and manager levels, indicate that in general the perceived ethical context did not affect judgments of the acceptability of earnings management. However, as anticipated, perceptions of a stronger benevolent/cosmopolitan climate (one that places more emphasis on the public interest) were associated with harsher judgments of accounting earnings management. Machiavellianism also had a marginally significant effect on judgments of accounting earnings management and a significant effect on judgments of operating earnings management, with high Machiavellians judging the actions to be more ethical. Two aspects of ethical culture, obedience to authority and ethical norms, were found to be significantly associated with organizational-professional conflict and affective organizational commitment. Contrary to our expectations, high Machiavellians appeared to be more, rather than less, sensitive to the perceived ethical context in their organization. Specifically, the perceived organizational ethical culture had a greater (lesser) impact on affective organizational commitment for high (low) Machiavellians.

<div>In my main dissertation essay, I investigate advertising spending during a recession. Advertising plays an important role in creating awareness, preference and purchase intent for many products and services. However, advertising is often cut when a firm needs to control costs. This empirical study examines a unique set of factors which motivated 553 firms to change their advertising spending during the Great Recession. The first half of the Great Recession had a moderate 2% decline in GDP and 1% to 2% cuts in advertising spending. The seasonality effect was weaker, which indicates that firms were not as likely to carryover spending from the prior year. The peak of the Great Recession had a GDP decline as high as 7%, which is considered severe. Average advertising spending declined by 13%. In addition to the seasonality effect, decreasing sales decreased advertising spending. Increasing firm risk tends to decrease advertising spending during the peak of the Great Recession, but not before. Finally, firms in high advertising intensity industries, where advertising is strategically important, had modest budget cuts. In contrast, firms in low-intensity industries had much larger percentage cuts.</div><div>The second essay examines real earnings management using advertising budgets” examines. Real earnings management occurs when managers change real activities to meet or beat important earnings benchmarks. Advertising has a limited short-term impact on firm sales for many products. Therefore, when a firm’s earnings are below key benchmarks for a fiscal quarter (year), managers are compelled to reduce advertising expenditures to boost earnings. This study examines factors which persuade firms to manage earnings using advertising budgets. Similar to earlier studies, we find firms suspect of managing earnings upwards reducing advertising expenses. The findings indicate that B2C firms are more likely to manage earnings by reducing advertising expenses than B2B firms. The findings also reveal that suspect firms which spend more in high advertising elasticity mediums such as TV do not reduce advertising spending as much as firms which spend more in low advertising elasticity mediums such as newspapers and magazines. The study also find evidence to suggest that suspect firms which report advertising expenditure in their income statement make smaller advertising spending cuts than firms which don’t report advertising expenditure. Finally, earnings management activity is much stronger during the last quarter of the fiscal year.</div>

Studies on earnings management usually hypothesise that managers manage accruals opportunistically. Few studies however, argue that managers can also use accruals to improve the value relevance of reported earnings to help investors better assess the firm's operating performance. While substantial evidence on managers' opportunistic behaviour on accruals has been documented in the literature, empirical evidence on the informativeness of accruals is scarce and inconclusive. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether managers use accruals to communicate private information regarding the firm's operating performance, or as reported in the literature, use them for their own benefit. This thesis finds that on average, firms reporting high earnings accompanied by high accruals have significantly negative subsequent period stock returns suggesting that these firms manage their accounting earnings. Focusing on stock dividend issues as an incentive to opportunistically increase accruals, the results are found to be consistent with the earnings management hypothesis. Stock dividend issuing firms are reported to significantly increase accruals in the issue year followed by poor earnings and stock price performances in the subsequent year. Moreover, discretionary accruals of the issuing firms are negatively correlated with both future earnings and abnormal stock returns. This evidence attempts to complement the earnings management literature. The analysis on the incentive to decrease accruals related to share repurchases, however, does not provide sufficient evidence to suggest that managers use their discretion to decrease accruals. To investigate the hypothesis that managers use accruals to convey information regarding their firm's future profitability, this thesis employs the contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements as the research setting. This choice was made to increase the likelihood of detecting the use of accruals as private information communication while simultaneously mitigating the likelihood of the opportunistic income smoothing hypothesis to explain the results. The evidence strongly indicates that managers use both accruals and dividend increases as their private information communication regarding their firm's future profitability. Dividend increasing firms report positive accruals which are positively correlated with future profitability. This finding contributes to the literature by providing evidence on the accrual signalling hypothesis. Overall, the results of this thesis suggest that, depending on the incentives, managers can use the discretion accorded under the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in estimating accounting accrual, either to manage accruals opportunistically or to help investors better assess the firms' operating performance.

本研究主要在研究上市（櫃）公司上半年公告強制性財務預測的達成率與下半年盈餘管理之間的關係。當公司在上半年度公告的財務預測過份樂觀，公司在公告預測的下半年擬現金增資時，則公司會以盈餘管理的方式來令原始（上次更新）預測達到準確的目的。即探討公司上半年度財務預測達成率過高或過低之的情境下，公司是否從事盈餘管理活動以避免於下半年度更新財務預測。 本研究以盈餘達成率作為衡量篩選樣本的指標，以無母數統計MANN-WHITNEY U TEST與單因子變異數(1-WAY ANOVA)分析資料。 本研究的實證結果顯示： 一、上市（櫃）公司於上半年度未更新財務預測，其上半年財務預測達成率低者，公司有傾向以盈餘管理方式操縱應計項目以避免於下半年更新財務預測。 二、上市（櫃）公司於上半年度更新一次財務預測，其上半年財務預測達成率仍未達20﹪者，公司有傾向以盈餘管理方式操縱應計項目以避免於下半年更新財務預測，但幅度不是很顯著，可能盈餘管理並非管理當局達成財務預測的主要方式。 三、不論上市（櫃）公司於上半年度是否更新過財務預測，其上半年財務預測達成率低者，公司皆有傾向以盈餘管理方式操縱應計項目以避免於下半年更新財務預測。而上半年度未更新財務預測者又較上半年度更新一次財務預測者傾向以盈餘管理方式操縱應計項目以避免在下半年更新財務預測。

在財務會計準則公報第一號「一般公認會計原則彙編」發布之前，上市公司可引用的會計方法彈性極大，可源自於美國的教課書或一般公認會計原則；亦可採用一些與會計方法有關的法規之規定，例如稅法、公司法與商業會計法等。因為這些彈性的存在，管理當局在其自身最大利益的考量之下，必然會傾向選擇對其自身最為有利的會計方法來編製財務報表，提供相關的財務資訊。 　　本研究根據財務會計準則公報第一號之相關規定與公報實施之前會計實務之差異為出發點，推論財務會計準則公報第一號的發布會大大地縮小管理當局編製損益表時操縱損益或會計選擇的空間。本研究運用應計項目尺度的變動來量度管理當局會計選擇的彈性或空間的改變。 　　本研究以財務會計準則公報第一號發布前後上市公司財務報表資訊，針對其應計項目的變動情形進行實證分析獲致以下的結果： 　　1.在總應計項目上，以前後二年及三年之平均數為分析對象，發現財務會計準則公報第一號發布前之總應計項目尺度，明顯大於之後之總應計項目尺度。 　　2.在與營業有關應計項目上，以前後二年及三年之平均數為分析對象，發現財務會計準則公報第一號發布前之與營業有關應計項目尺度，明顯大於之後與營業有關應計項目尺度。 　　3.針對流動比率、營運資金、營業週期天數、負債對股東權益比、總資產等五個財務屬性，將樣本區分為二組進行敏感度分析，發現此五個變數對前二項的結果並沒有影響。 　　據以上的實證結果，本研究獲致以下結論： 　　1.財務會計準則公報第一號的發布，確使管理當局利用總應計項目進行損益操縱或會計選擇空間縮小了。 　　2.財務會計準則公報第一號的發布，確使管理當局利用與營業有關應計項目進行損益操縱或會計選擇的空間縮小了。

Pro forma EPS reporting is a fairly new accounting disclosure; it has since been modified in 2003 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to include additional disclosure and filing requirements. This “Regulation G” has been around for nearly a decade and since that time a major financial crises in the United States has occurred. This study attempts to analyze trends in pro forma EPS reporting within the S & P 500 constituents during the Great Recession, and speculate as to whether earnings management was apparent. This study provides evidence that there was a significant increase in the proportion of pro forma disclosers and magnitudes of those disclosers. Results also indicate that the presence of negative earnings and intangibles have a significant effect on the magnitude of these differences and that there appears to be a level of consistency in pro forma reporting among firms. Results allude to the possibility of short term and long term earnings management strategies during the Great recession among S & P 500 constituents.

This study poses two questions relating to earnings management with the intent to mislead the market for the firms equity and debt. A multiple regression model is used to test two hypoteses through 7 hypothesized determinants of discretionary accruals and 3 control variables. A sample of Swedish real estate firms, including only the years when the firms are both quoted and have disclosed discretionary revaluations of their real estate properties is analyzed. Evidence is found of earnings management with the intent of misleading the stock market but no such evidence is found of earnings management with the intent of misleading the market for corporate debt. The implications of the findings are discussed and the direct and indirect harm of earnings management is specified.