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Abstract This thesis is examining not only the relationship between earnings management and information disclosure but also which information disclosure dimensions influence earnings management in banks and financial holding corporations. I classified the information into five dimensions and they are independent variables in this thesis. Due to different industrial characteristics among financial and other industries, I didn¡¦t use The Healy Model ( 1985), The Jones Model (1991), The DeAngelo Model(1986), The Modified Jones (1995) Model to estimate earnings management. Instead, I choose eight proxies selected in Liu¡¦s paper (1999), and they are Bad Debt, Provisions of Other Loss, Gain on Disposal of Investment, Loss on Disposal of Investment, Gain -Disposal of Fixed Asset, Loss -Disposal of Fixed Asset, Gain on Trading S-T Investment, Loss on Trading S-T Investment as the earnings management proxies for financial industry. Hence, I also chose those proxies as my earnings management proxies. The results show that the total scores of information disclosure are not related to earnings management in banks and financial holding corporations. On the other hands, it is the score of information disclosure dimensions related to earnings management. It demonstrates that different information disclosure dimensions influence the earnings management in different ways for banks and financial holding corporations. Key words: earnings management, information disclosure, banks, financial holding industry

This paper tests the relationship between ownership/leadership structures and stock returns for firms listed in Taiwan. A ¡§Governance Index¡¨ is built based on four different aspects of the company¡¦s governance structure: 1.) CEO duality, 2.) Size of the board of directors, 3.) Managements¡¦ shareholdings and 4.) Block shareholders¡¦ holding. This index is used as a proxy measure of the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanism. I show that firms identified by the governance index as under sounding governance outperform those under poor governance. The results indicate that the corporate governance index built in this study is a valid measure in evaluating the effectiveness of corporate governance of firms in Taiwan. I demonstrate one additional application of the governance index constructed in this dissertation by showing that firms (identified by the governance index) with strong corporate governance mechanism effectively constrain the propensity of managers to engage in earnings management and improve the quality of reported earnings. Corporate governance is an effective monitoring device of the quality of financial reporting. Firms with poor governance structure are more likely to avoid reporting small losses by reporting small positive earnings. Furthermore, the magnitude of abnormal accruals is significantly related to governance level. Firms with weak corporate governance structures are more likely to use discretionary accruals to raise reported earnings.

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.

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While improving the seasoned equity offerings, companies often manipulate the earnings or window the financial statements to get approval and increase IPO prices, and thus acquiring the funds easier. The main focus for this study is to exam whether the firms listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange manipulate earnings through discretionary accruals before the seasoned equity offerings, and the relationship between pre-issue discretionary accruals and the post-issue earnings, operating performance and long-term stock returns. The sample observed consists of 226 firms listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange conducting seasoned equity offering from 1991 to 1998 and the Modified Jones Model was used to estimate the discretionary accruals basing on the financial statements of the year. The discretionary accruals are the main research variables. The empirical results show that: 1. Firms listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange intend to manipulate the discretionary current accruals before conducting the seasoned equity offerings in order to improve earnings, and the larger pre-issue discretionary accruals, the larger the decline of post-issue earnings. 2. The post-issue total asset returns are clearly negatively correlated to the discretionary current accruals in the year before the seasoned equity offerings, indicating that the adjustment of discretionary accruals will influence the post-issue operating performance. 3. Excluding the possible influences from the industry, the discretionary current accruals present significantly negative effect on the post-issue operating performance. The level of earnings management becomes larger, the post-issue long-term stock return will decline greater.

Based on the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No.39, the employee bonus plan is treated as an expense item rather than earnings distribution of a firm. The empirical study examines the relationship between complementary measures of expensing employee bonus plan and earnings management. This research hypothesizes that managers will have stronger incentives to manage earnings when the new regulation will start to implement. This research empirically tests the differences in earnings management behaviors between Taiwanese technology firms and Taiwanese nontechnology firms. This research used the Modified Jones model (1995) to measure the discretionary accruals and design a regression model to testify empirical tests. This research also used pair t-test to examining the mean difference tests. The empirical results indicate that there is a significant difference between the dummy variable for industry classification and discretionary accruals. There is a significant positive relationship between discretionary accruals and earnings. There is a significant negative relationship between discretionary accruals and cash flow from operations. There is a significant difference between the discretionary accruals and administrative expenses. There is a strong connection between new regulation and managers¡¦ bonus. In order to protect their self-interests, the results show the changeable of earnings management behaviors.

Financial statement quality can directly affect investor confidence. Financial fraud is most through misstated financial reports, and even fraudulent misstatement may result from financial restatement. Well-functioning mechanisms can improve financial statement quality. In this study, the financial restatements from 2002 to 2008 were investigated to discuss the influences of operating performance, degree of earnings management and corporate governance mechanisms. The results reveal that the worse the operating performance, the more probability the financial restatements. It indicates that increasing earnings can cover up bad operation. It is further found that the financial restatements with worse operating performance will probably increase their restatement amounts. In the aspect of earnings management, the results show that the higher the degree of earnings management by discretionary accruals, the more probability the financial restatements. It is indicative of the manager use discretionary accruals to operate the earnings management in order to cover up their worse financial performance. But the verified result is not outstanding. It is also found that the financial restatements with higher degree of earnings management by discretionary accruals will probably increase their restatement amounts. Finally, the results can not prove whether the corporate governance mechanisms show that the financial restatements probably occur in the companies with CEO duality. Moreover, the results also can not prove whether the larger the board of directors, the higher their restatement amounts.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Mississippi State University. Richard C. Adkerson School of Accountancy. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Η ευρεία χρήση των λογιστικών πληροφοριών από επενδυτές και οικονομικούς αναλυτές με σκοπό την αξιολόγηση των μετοχών, δημιουργεί ένα κίνητρο για τους μάνατζερ να χειραγωγούν τα κέρδη και να μπορούν έτσι να επηρεάσουν τις βραχυπρόθεσμες επιδόσεις των τιμών των μετοχών αυτών. Παρακινημένη λόγω της αύξησης στις αγορές κεφαλαίου σε διεθνές επίπεδο και την πρόσφατη οικονομική κρίση, η εργασία αυτή εξετάζει το ρόλο της διαχείρισης των κερδών για τον προσδιορισμό του κόστους κεφαλαίου μιας επιχείρησης, τις συνέπειες της ποιότητας των κερδών στην αγορά κεφαλαίων και τις συνθήκες τις οποίες οι αναλυτές πρέπει να εξετάζουν προσεκτικά όσων αφορά τη ποιότητα των κερδών μιας εταιρείας. Επιπλέον, όπως υποστηρίζεται από τη διεθνή βιβλιογραφία, έχει διαπιστωθεί μια σύνδεση μεταξύ της ποιότητας των κερδών και του κόστος του κεφαλαίου, η οποία προϋποθέτει ένα βασικό οικονομικό ρόλο στις αποφάσεις κατανομής των κεφαλαίων (δηλαδή το χρέος και τις επενδύσεις μετοχικού κεφαλαίου) για την χρηματοοικονομική πληροφόρηση. Εξετάζοντας το θέμα από τη σκοπιά ενός οικονομικού αναλυτή και ενός επενδυτή , κύριος στόχος μου είναι ο ακριβής προσδιορισμός των κερδών, τα οποία θεωρούνται και ως συνοπτικός δείκτης της συνολικής ποιότητας της χρηματοοικονομικής πληροφόρησης. Τέλος, η πρόθεση μου στη συζήτηση της έρευνας που αξιολογεί τις επιπτώσεις της ποιότητας των κερδών στην αγορά κεφαλαίων αποσκοπεί στο να οδηγήσει κάποιον σε περαιτέρω έρευνα σε αυτόν τον τομέα αλλά και να ενθαρρύνει την έρευνα για συναφή θέματα, όπως για παράδειγμα, το ρόλο της ποιότητας των κερδών στη σύναψη συμβάσεων και τη διαχείριση. / The widespread use of accounting information by investors and financial analysts to help value stocks creates an incentive for managers to manipulate earnings in an attempt to influence short-term stock price performance. Motivated due to the growth in debt markets internationally and the recent debt crisis, this paper examines the role of earnings management in the determination of a firm’s cost of capital, capital market consequences of earnings quality and circumstances analysts need to look carefully at a company’s earnings quality. Furthermore, as argued by the international literature, is analysed and discussed a link between earnings quality and cost of capital, which implies a basic economic role in capital allocation decisions (i.e. debt and equity investments) for accounting information. Since I adopt a financial analyst & investor perspective, my main focus is on the precision of earnings, which is viewed as a summary indicator of the overall quality of financial reporting. Finally, my intent in discussing research that evaluates the capital market effects of earnings quality is both to stimulate further research in this area and to encourage research on related topics, including for example, the role of earnings quality in contracting and stewardship.