Earnings management can be used to respond to a variable economics environment to improve firm performance under efficient contracting perspective but earnings management can also be abused to hurt a firm¡¦s performance under opportunistic behavioral perspective. Investors, therefore, have difficulty to understand and know about the purpose of earnings management, especially for firms in Taiwan that are very likely to engage in earnings management due to poor governance. Although numerous literatures have shed light on managers¡¦ incentives on earnings management and the effects of earnings management on firm performance, little attention has been devoted to disentangle the relation among corporate governance, earnings management and firm performance. The purpose of this dissertation is to unravel manager¡¦s intension on earnings management and to clarify whether proper governance can alleviate the abuse of earnings management and, therefore, enhance firm performance. Without distilling the effect of corporate governance on earnings management, the empirical results indicate that there is an inverse relation between earnings management and firm performance, implying that managers are more likely to exploit the latitude of earnings management to mislead investors and gain opportunistic profit. This dissertation further examines the relation between earnings management and the features of corporate governance including ownership structure and board characteristics. These results show that stronger corporate governance can effectively reduce the abuse of earnings management. Furthermore, this dissertation provides the evidence that the relation between earnings management and firm performance is improved when the use of earnings management is monitored under proper governance.

[pt] A dissertação é composta por três artigos independentes, uma introdução unificada, um referencial teórico (junto com nossa revisão sistemática) e uma discussão geral. No primeiro artigo, revisamos a crescente literatura sobre discricionariedade contábil. Com base na literatura anterior, definimos a discricionariedade contábil como a latitude permitida pelas regras contábeis para que os contadores exerçam seus julgamentos por meio de um conjunto de escolhas e estimativas contábeis, que influenciam diretamente o resultado contábil de uma empresa. Aplicando uma metodologia de mapeamento sistemático na literatura existente, encontramos evidências de quatro correntes principais de literatura: 1) discricionariedade gerencial, 2) escolha contábil, 3) gerenciamento de resultados e 4) impairment de goodwill. Cada um desses fluxos indica possíveis oportunidades para os gerentes exercerem poder discricionário sobre as práticas contábeis, moldando a qualidade dos relatórios contábeis e, em última análise, moldando como os mercados financeiros reagem às informações contábeis. A partir de uma amostra inicial de mais de 1.000 documentos, analisamos e discutimos detalhadamente 69 artigos, dos quais identificamos fatores relacionados às regras contábeis que potencialmente fornecem ou restringem o oportunismo gerencial, os incentivos econômicos para que as empresas usem a discrição contábil e os mecanismos que potencialmente limitam o uso indevido do poder discricionário. As descobertas são relevantes para profissionais, reguladores, pesquisadores acadêmicos e gerentes corporativos, pois ajudam a entender a literatura existente sobre o tema e potencialmente melhorar as práticas contábeis. Por fim, sugiro caminhos interessantes para pesquisas futuras. O segundo artigo estende essa literatura construindo um índice de discricionariedade contábil (IAD) para empresas listadas e explorando, usando um modelo de diferenças em diferenças e amostras pareadas, como mudanças no fornecimento de discricionariedade contábil afetaram o gerenciamento de resultados em 43 países durante 2003-2007, quando vários países adotaram as IFRS. Os resultados empíricos mostram que as variações do IAD estão positivamente associadas ao gerenciamento de resultados por accruals e negativamente relacionadas às estratégias de gerenciamento de resultados reais. O terceiro artigo teve como objetivo construir um índice de discrição contábil em nível de país (ADI) contemporâneo que mede o nível de discricionariedade contábil que as regras contábeis permitem para empresas privadas em 35 países. Embora os regulamentos e regras contábeis forneçam um fator essencial no comportamento gerencial na preparação de relatórios financeiros, a literatura regulatória sobre relatórios contábeis negligenciou amplamente a análise da discricionariedade contábil no nível da regra (nível GAAP). Assim, a contribuição para a literatura contábil foi construir a ADI para investigar diferenças sistemáticas na discricionariedade contábil entre os países. Validamos o índice internamente (ou seja, usando alfa de Cronbach, Lambda 4 de Guttman e análise fatorial) e externamente (com análises em nível de país e empresa) e demonstramos que ele tem variabilidade significativa entre países. Por fim, contribuímos para a literatura fornecendo uma medida objetiva de discricionariedade contábil em diferentes países. Argumentamos que entender a variabilidade no nível de país na discricionariedade contábil é crucial para entender a discricionariedade gerencial geral no nível da empresa. / [en] This dissertation consists of three independent articles, a unified introduction, a theoretical framework (in the same chapter of the first article), and a general discussion. In the first article, we review the growing literature on accounting discretion. Drawing from previous literature, we define accounting discretion as the latitude allowed by accounting rules for accountants to exercise their judgments through a set of choices and accounting estimates, which directly influence a company s profits and losses. First, applying a methodology of systematic mapping on the extant literature, we found evidence of four main streams of literature: 1) managerial discretion, 2) accounting choice, 3) earnings management, and 4) goodwill impairment. Each of these streams indicates possible opportunities for managers to exert discretion over accounting practices, shaping the quality of accounting reporting and, ultimately, shaping how financial markets react to accounting information. Drawing from an initial sample of more than 1,000 documents, we analyze and discuss in detail 69 articles, from which we identified factors related to accounting rules that potentially provide or restrict managerial opportunism, the economic incentives for firms to use accounting discretion, and mechanisms that potentially limit the misuse of discretion. The findings are relevant for practitioners, regulators, academic researchers, and corporate managers as they help understand the extant literature on the topic and potentially improve accounting practices. Finally, we suggest exciting avenues for future research. The second article extends this literature by constructing an index of accounting discretion (IAD) for listed firms and exploring, using a differences-in-differences and paired-samples model, how changes in the provision of accounting discretion affected earnings management in 43 countries during 2003-2007, when several countries adopted IFRS. The empirical results show that IAD variations are positively associated with accruals-based earnings management and negatively related to real earnings management strategies. The third article aims to build a contemporary country-level accounting discretion index (ADI) that measures the level of accounting discretion that accounting rules allow for private companies in 35 countries. Although accounting regulations and rules provide an essential factor in managerial behavior in preparing financial reports, regulatory literature on accounting reports largely neglected the analysis of accounting discretion at the regulatory level (GAAP level). So, the contribution to the accounting literature was to build the ADI to investigate systematic differences in accounting discretion across countries. We validate the index internally (i.e., using Cronbach s alpha, Guttman s Lambda 4, and factor analysis) and externally (with country and company-level analyses) and demonstrate that it has significant cross-country variability. We contribute to the literature by providing an objective measure of accounting discretion across different countries. We argue that understanding country-level variability in accounting discretion is crucial to understanding overall managerial discretion at the firm level.