Το φαινόμενο της χειραγώγησης των κερδών (earnings management) έχει απασχολήσει έντονα τα τελευταία χρόνια τις ρυθμιστικές αρχές, επενδυτές και γενικότερα τους χρήστες των εταιρικών οικονομικών καταστάσεων παγκοσμίως. Η παρούσα διατριβή σκοπό έχει τη διερεύνηση του βαθμού στον οποίο οι Ελληνικές επιχειρήσεις χειραγωγούν τα κέρδη τους με αποτέλεσμα άλλοτε να εμφανίζονται λιγότερα και άλλοτε περισσότερα από ότι στην πραγματικότητα είναι. Μέσω εφαρμογής διαφορετικών μελετών περιπτώσεων (case studies) και με τη χρησιμοποίηση νέων οικονομετρικών προσεγγίσεων για τον έλεγχο υποθέσεων τα συμπεράσματα συντείνουν στο ότι υψηλό ποσοστό ελληνικών επιχειρήσεων όντως χειραγωγούν τα κέρδη τους προκειμένου για την εξυπηρέτηση συγκεκριμένων στόχων. Πιο ενδιαφέρον δε είναι το συμπέρασμα ότι εφόσον υπάρχουν κίνητρα δεν διστάζουν να προβούν σε χειραγώγηση και άλλων λογιστικών μεγεθών όπως είναι οι πωλήσεις. / Earnings management has drawn increasing attention of regulators, accounting standard setters, and investors. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the extent of earnings management in the Greek context. By relying on superior econometric methodologies, applied in several different case studies, the conclusions confirm our hypotheses that a great percentage of Greek companies do manipulate their earnings in order to beat specific targets. More importantly, for a first time, it is provided empirical evidence that these companies, under certain circumstances, tend to manipulate other accounting variables as well i.e their reported sales.

Earnings inequality had been rising in the United States since the late 1970s. However, at the level of individual states earnings inequality has been rising, stable, and even falling in some states at different points in time. States vary in both the degree and character of change in earnings inequality, the extent to which they have experienced various inequality-increasing developments, and their institutional capacity to mediate these developments. I argue in this dissertation that this variation offers a rich opportunity for comparative analysis and an excellent lens for exploring the dynamics of the recent rise in earnings inequality.In this dissertation I utilize multiple methods and a state-level analysis to explore a number of research questions. What are the major factors driving rising state earnings inequality between 1980 and 2007? To what extent have states taken distinct causal paths to higher levels of inequality? How have states differed in terms of the types of wage growth that have result in rising, stable, or falling inequality? Throughout, special attention is paid to the manner in which state institutional arrangements, such as union strength and minimum wage rates, may mediate various inequality-increasing developments. Additionally, there is a focus on the contribution of industry flows, specifically losses of manufacturing employment and increasing employment in financial, technology and health-related occupations, to regional patterns of change in inequality.Overall, the intensity, timing, and number of factors that have converged upon any particular state vary substantially between regions and over time. A broad finding of this dissertation is that the net impact of many inequality-increasing factors is contingent upon a state's economic condition and institutional character. In particular, state institutional arrangements have powerfully mediated the impact of various inequality-increasing developments. Also, these analyses suggest that industry shifts have substantially impacted state earnings distributions and are critical to understanding regional patterns of change in earnings inequality. In closing, I suggest that much research on rising inequality at the national-level does not fully capture the substantial diversity of state experiences with rising inequality or the complexity of the interactions between the various factors producing those distinct experiences.

This dissertation consists of three essays in applied microeconomics. The first and third essays are in the area of empirical labor economics while the second essay utilizes laboratory experiments to study labor market issues. The first essay investigates the effects of social ability on the earnings of employees. Using a microeconomic model in a two-firm setting, the effects of social ability on a worker's earnings are calculated and shown to be increasing with higher social ability levels. The results show that the more social workers, when compared to the less social workers, end up working a lower number of hours but at a higher hourly wage rate. Because of these offsetting effects, social ability had no net effect on annual earnings. The second essay of the dissertation addresses the same issue by using experimental methods. In the constructed experimental design, subjects are randomly selected and assigned to one of two groups, where the second group is the "control" group. A significant relationship is found between how much subjects earned and the ratings they get from their group members for the social group. The highest earnings of the social group are significantly higher than the earnings of the control group. When subjects are assumed to behave rationally, those in the group which spends more time together earn significantly more than those in the control group. The third essay of this dissertation analyzes the findings of Lazear about raiding, seniority within a firm, and job search during time not worked. Using the NLSY-79, a raiding dummy is included in the classical wage equation to better understand its effects. Seniority within a firm and search while unemployed are also included in the wage equation. Earnings of those who are not raided and stay with the same firm are also compared to those who are raided and switch firms. In both cases, statistically significant results are found confirming the theoretical findings of Lazear. Raiding is associated with higher earnings and staying with the same firm does yield lower earnings. Unemployed search is also examined, and the results support Lazear's statement that search while unemployed yields to lower earnings.

This dissertation examines the effect of income smoothing on information uncertainty, stock returns, and cost of equity. Following existing literature, I construct two income smoothing measures - capturing income smoothing through both total accruals and discretionary accruals. I show that income smoothing tends to reduce firms' information uncertainty, as measured by stock return volatility, analyst forecast dispersion, and analyst forecast error. Further, I provide evidence that market prices income smoothing and rewards income smoothing firms with a premium. Controlling for unexpected earnings shocks and other firm characteristics, income smoothing firms have significantly higher abnormal returns around earnings announcement. Finally, I show that income smoothing, particularly through discretionary accruals, reduces firms' implied cost of equity.

The object of this research is to assess the effects of Ontario’s new immigration policy on young non-permanent residents. In particular, it is to evaluate how the wage gap between young non-permanent residents and young Canadian citizens has changed in the labor market of Ontario from 2001 to 2006 to demonstrate influences of new policy. On November 21, 2005, the governments of Ontario and Canada signed the first Canada-Ontario immigration agreement that relaxed several requirements for temporary workers to apply for permanent residency. This paper selected data from the 2001 and 2006 population census to conduct a linear regression to analyze the wage gap and the effects of immigration policy. By using the difference-in-difference approach, this paper found that there was no significant positive effect of the new policy on the entry earnings of non-permanent residents in Ontario.

This study investigates whether auditors respond to earnings management pressure created by analyst forecasts. Analyst forecasts create an important earnings target for management, and professional standards direct auditors to consider how this pressure could affect their clients. Using annual analyst forecasts available during the planning phase of the audit, I examine whether this form of earnings management pressure affects clients’ financial statement misstatements. Next, I investigate whether auditors respond to earnings forecast pressure through audit fees and reporting delay. I find that higher levels of analyst forecast pressure increase the likelihood of client restatement. I also find that auditors charge higher audit fees and delay the issuance of the audit report in response to pressure from analyst expectations. Finally, I find that when audit clients are subject to high analyst forecast pressure, a high audit fee response by auditors mitigates the likelihood of client misstatements.

In this thesis, I examine the factors associated with analysts’ voluntary practice of issuing cash flow forecasts and earnings forecasts on the same day. I draw on Hughes and Pae’s (2004) management partial disclosure equilibrium and predict how an analyst decides to issue a cash flow forecast revision along with and according to her bad news and good news earnings forecast revision. In particular, I predict that analysts strategically choose to supplement earnings forecasts with positive cash flow news when they deliver bad news earnings forecasts. Consistent with my prediction, I find that analysts are more likely to issue cash flow forecast revisions in the opposite direction to their earnings forecast revisions when they issue downward earnings forecast revisions than when they issue upward earnings forecast revisions. The results suggest that analysts may not make their decisions to issue cash flow forecasts as objectively as they ought to do in their role as independent information intermediaries. Rather, analyst decisions to issue cash flow forecasts are akin to managers’ strategic decisions to voluntarily disclose supplemental information to affect investors’ confidence in their primary news (earnings forecasts). / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2009-05-27 16:20:09.248

Forecasting firms' earnings has long been an interest of market participants and academics. Traditional forecasting studies in a multivariate time series setting do not take into account that the timing of market data release for a specific time period of observation is often spread over several days or weeks. This thesis focuses on the separation of announcement timing or data release and the use of econometric real-time methods, which we refer to as an updated vector autoregression (VAR) forecast, to predict data that have yet to be released. In comparison to standard time series forecasting, we show that the updated forecasts will be more accurate the higher the correlation coefficients among the standard VAR innovations are. Forecasting with the sequential release of information has not been studied in the VAR framework, and our approach to U.S. nonfarm payroll employment and the six Canadian banks shows its value. By using the updated VAR forecast, we conclude that there are relative efficiency gains in the one-step-ahead forecast compared to the ordinary VAR forecast, and compared to professional consensus forecasts. Thought experiments emphasize that the release ordering is crucial in determining forecast accuracy. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-30 12:34:42.629

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Redovisning har till syfte att ge en verklig bild över företagets finansiella situation och fungera som ett beslutsunderlag för intressenter, detta är dock inte alltid fallet. Denna uppsats har till syfte att undersöka om aktiebolag, noterade på svenska börser, med avsättningar för garantiåtaganden använder sig av dessa avsättningar som ett verktyg för resultatmanipulering. Uppsatsen har undersökt hur företag inom tillverkningsbranschen sätter av för framtida garantiåtaganden samt om det finns någon synbar systematik i dessa avsättningar. För att undersöka om så var fallet, beräknades korrelationen mellan olika variabler från företagens årsredovisningar. Beräkningarna kom att göras i två grupper utifrån hur företag i uppsatsens urval redovisat sina garantiåtaganden i årsrapporten. Studien kom fram till att det starkaste sambandet för svenska aktiebolag i tillverkningsbranschen förekommer mellan garantiavsättning och nettoomsättning eller mellan årets garantiavsättning och föregående års garantiavsättning. Att en stor andel av företagen sätter av i enlighet med årets försäljning är något som ligger i linje med vad flertalet av företagen själva anger i årsredovisningen. För att undersöka om företagen använts sig av garantiåtaganden som ett verktyg för resultatmanipulering undersöktes om företagen satt av onormalt stora eller små garantiavsättningar. I denna studie bedömdes 42 av 104 garantiavsättningar som onormala. Det var dock inget av de undersökta företagen som under något utav åren gick från ett negativt till ett positivt resultat efter att den onormala garantiavsättningen korrigerats till en mer normal garantiavsättning. Denna studie gav således inget direkt resultat om huruvida svenska börsnoterade företag inom tillverkningsindustrin använder sig av garantireserver som ett verktyg för resultatmanipulering, däremot kan det spekuleras kring varför vissa företag har så stora skillnader i sina avsättningar under åren.