En elementär beståndsdel av en fungerande marknad är tillförlitlig finansiell information. Ämnet Earnings Management består av olika teorier och metoder för att mäta manipulationer av den finansiella informationen som redovisas av bolag. Anledningen till manipulationer beror bland annat på agentproblemet mellan bolag och intressenter. Bolag (eller tillämparen) har incitament att vilseleda sina intressenter genom redovisningen för att nå fördelar. Ett sätt att motverka agentproblemet och kvalitetssäkra redovisningen är att låta en revisor genomföra revision på bolagets räkenskaper. Tidigare studier inom Earnings Management har visat att bolag med en Big-4 revisor, i mindre utsträckning än bolag med icke Big-4-revisor, manipulerar sin redovisning. Tidigare studier har också jämfört börsnoterade bolag med privata bolag, vad gäller förekomsten av Earnings Management, med blandat resultat. Eftersom revision nu under vissa förutsättningar är frivilligt för aktiebolag i Sverige, till skillnad från före den 10 november 2010 då det var obligatoriskt, har ett delvis nytt område öppnats upp avseende jämförelser mellan aktiebolag med och utan revision. Syftet med uppsatsen var således att undersöka och jämföra förekomsten av Earnings Management mellan bolag med och utan revision för att kunna dra en slutsats om revision begränsar Earnings Management.I uppsatsen undersöktes och jämfördes således manipulationer mellan två grupper med aktiebolag; en grupp utan revision och en grupp med revision. Eftersom grupperna bestod av 5000 bolag vardera innebar detta ett urval på 10 000 bolag. Manipulationerna uppmättes utifrån två vedertagna metoder som bygger på kognitiva referenspunkter respektive redovisad vinst som riktvärde. Med den förra metoden, som genomfördes utifrån data på tre olika nyckeltal avseende finansiell stabilitet (soliditet, kassalikviditet och balanslikviditet), jämfördes observerad frekvens mot förväntad frekvens för varje decimal (10 %) per nyckeltal. Ett one-sample proportions test testade signifikanta skillnader för varje decimal. Den senare metoden, som genomfördes utifrån data på ett fjärde nyckeltal (räntabilitet på totala tillgångar), jämförde antalet bolag i en grupp inom ett redovisat intervall med antalet bolag i den andra gruppen inom samma intervall. Ett two-sample proportions test testade om skillnaden i frekvensen mellan grupperna var signifikant.Gällande de kognitiva referenspunkterna visade inte empirin från två av nyckeltalen några indikationer på manipulationer. Således var det omöjligt att dra en slutsats om revision begränsar Earnings Management eller ej. Empirin från tredje nyckeltalet gällande kognitiva referenspunkter visade på manipulationer bland båda grupperna med visst liknande mönster från tidigare studier om kognitiva referenspunkter. Således drogs slutsatsen att revision inte verkar begränsa Earnings Management.Avseende metoden som baserades på redovisad vinst som riktvärde uppmättes signifikant fler bolag med revision än bolag utan revision inom intervallet 0-5 %. Således drogs slutsatsen att revision inte verkar begränsa Earnings Management.

Background & Subject discussion: Financial reporting and earnings affect stakeholders’ decisions and is a vital component in firm’s information disclosure. Management possesses considerable influence over financial reports. Earnings consist of a cash-flow and accrual component. Earnings can be affected by managers’ judgment and decision either by accrual-based earnings management or real activities manipulation. Earnings management affects the relevance and reliability of financial reporting and is widely researched. Europe is consolidating and accounting and audit standards are harmonizing. Real activities manipulation is unobserved in Europe. Increased attention and regulations of earnings management are inducing more creative methods to alter earnings, such as stock repurchases. Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to investigate if real activities manipulation can be observed in Europe and to what extent in relationship to accrual-based activities to avoid reporting small losses. An underlying purpose is to study different methods of RAM, including some newer approaches to detect hypothesized RAM by stock repurchases. An additional purpose is to evaluate the different utilized detection methods to clarify effectiveness. The final purpose is to consider possible effects of EM on reliability and relevance of financial reporting. Conclusion: The result concludes that earnings management are performed by real activities manipulation. Stock repurchases, decreased discretionary expenses and production cost all indicate earnings management to avoid reporting earnings below a specific benchmark. The result questions the reliability and relevance of reported earnings.

U.S. multinational corporations are well known for shifting income to low tax foreign subsidiaries to avoid U.S. income tax. Yet little is known about how multinational corporations opportunistically use low tax foreign subsidiaries for financial reporting purpose. Understanding this question has implications for U.S. accounting regulators to set enforcement targets. Using worldwide consolidated financial statements, I examine the role of taxes for multinational corporations to manage earnings in foreign subsidiaries. I find that by managing earnings in low tax foreign countries, multinational corporations can reduce the effective tax rate on pretax accrual earnings by an average of 4.3%. To examine the implication of opportunistic foreign earnings management on investors' equity valuation, I find evidence that investors do not seem to overvalue foreign managed earnings compared to domestic managed earnings, though foreign earnings are on average valued higher than domestic earnings.

This study resolves divergent prior findings relating book-tax differences to future earnings, determines whether prior literature has missed relationships between different types of book-tax differences and pre-tax and/or after-tax income, and investigates prior earnings as a factor contributing to the observed relationships. As past research has found that some firms have large book-tax differences over several years, this study separates these firms with large stable book-tax differences from others with large book-tax differences (non-stable) when investigating the link between large book-tax differences and future earnings. Finally, this study investigates whether the relationship between book-tax differences and future earnings reflects information about prior earnings and finds that prior earnings growth explains much of the lower persistence found for firms with large book-tax differences.

Goodwill, for financial accounting purposes, is an intangible asset on the balance sheet that represents the excess of the amount paid for an acquired entity over the net fair value of the assets acquired. The Financial Accounting Standards Board has recently issued a new mandate. This new guideline eliminates annual amortization of goodwill and requires annual valuation for potential goodwill impairment and consequent writedown. Determining the amount of impairment requires management estimation, thus, allowing managerial discretion in developing the impairment amounts. Managerial discretion may then be used to manage earnings. Earnings management occurs when managers exercise their professional judgment in financial reporting to manipulate earnings. Prior literature documents that managers have strong motivations to manage earnings. Managers sometimes respond to these motivations by managing earnings to exceed key earnings thresholds. The new goodwill guideline might be used as an earnings management tool. Thus, this dissertation examines whether earnings management results from the judgmental latitude allowed in estimating goodwill when earnings will otherwise just miss key earnings benchmarks. Specifically, this study tests goodwill impairment writedowns in a cross-sectional distributional analysis for the year 2002, the first year following the effective date of the new goodwill standards. The sample is taken from the financial information of publicly-traded companies tracked in the Compustat and CRSP databases. To identify firms that are likely to have managed earnings to exceed key benchmarks, earnings per share, both before and after goodwill impairment writedowns, is compared with two thresholds established in prior research. The first, is a positive earnings per share; and the second is the prior year’s earnings per share. Results from applying both tobit and logistic regression models suggest that managers are exploiting their discretion in recognizing goodwill impairments to manage earnings. Thus, this project contributes to the earnings management literature in that it highlights the exploitation of increased judgmental latitude for earnings management purposes.

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This dissertation examines the general research issue of whether the components of earnings are informative and specifically 1) how analysts consider earnings components when predicting future earnings and 2) whether the information content in, and analysts’ use of, earnings components have changed through time. Although earnings components have predictive value for future earnings based on each component’s persistence, extant research provides only a limited understanding of whether and how analysts consider this when forecasting. Using an integrated income statement and balance sheet framework to estimate the persistence of earnings components, I first establish that disaggregation based on the earnings components framework in this study is helpful to predict future earnings and helps explains contemporaneous returns. I then find evidence suggesting that although analysts consider the persistence of various earnings components, they do not fully integrate this information into their forecasts. Interestingly, analysts appear to be selective in their incorporation of the information in earnings components, seeming to ignore information from components indicating lower persistence, which results in higher forecast errors. Conversely, when a firm’s income is concentrated in high persistence items, analysts appear to incorporate the information into their forecasts, reducing their forecast errors. I also report that the usefulness of components relative to aggregate earnings has dramatically and continuously increased over the past several decades, and contemporaneous returns appear to be much better explained by earnings components than aggregate earnings (than historically). Finally, the relation between analyst forecast errors and the differential persistence of earnings components has also declined over time, indicating that analysts appear to recognize the increasing importance of earnings components through time. / text

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This paper examines the relationship between the quality of accountings earnings and long-run performance for South African acquirers in the context of market-to-book value classifications. Glamour acquirers show significant earnings momentum prior to acquisition; however this momentum is not sustainable. In the period after the acquisition glamour acquirers exhibit a decreasing earnings trend and it is found that South African value acquirers outperform value acquirer’s post-acquisition. This paper does not however identify the determinant of this phenomenon as the hypothesis that the pre-acquisition earnings momentum of glamour acquirers is in part bolstered by their aggressive investments is rejected.