1,720,961 research outputs found
Financial Crisis: Time to Manage Earnings?
Full text linkPrevious research on how financial crisis affects managers’ earnings management behavior has resulted in different scenarios with inconclusive results. To address the ambiguity in the findings in the literature, the present study presents critical realism as an alternative to the positivist mainstream approach. The study argues against the existence of a causal law based on a constant conjunction model (i.e., whenever a financial crisis happens, earnings management happens) and concludes that financial crisis cannot be seen as the cause of earnings management. Finally, it suggests exploring other structures at work that might be responsible for earnings managemen
Introduction
No full textThis opening chapter presents the research question, gives a brief overview of the book, and pinpoints the main theoretical and practical contributions of the present work. The study examines whether the generative mechanism for managing earnings identified by the previous research (i.e., financial crisis) is adequate. Chapter 2 presents the earnings management phenomenon while Chap. 3 provides a critical realist evaluation of mainstream earnings management literature. Chapter 4 approaches the question of the relationship between financial crisis and earnings management. Finally, Chap. 5 presents both the positivist and the critical realist approach to the research question
Does Financial Crisis Cause Earnings Management?
No full textPrevious research on how financial crisis affects managers’ earnings management behavior has resulted in different scenarios with inconclusive results. This Chapter presents both the positivist and the critical realist approach to the research question. To address the ambiguity in the findings in the literature, the present study used a mainstream approach, with the results showing no statistical support for the hypothesis that financial crisis influences earnings management. More specifically, results indicate that managers’ earnings behavior does not differ from the pre-crisis to the crisis periods. Further, it presents critical realism as an alternative to mainstream approach. The study argues against the existence of a causal law based on a constant conjunction model (i.e., whenever a financial crisis happens, earnings management happens) and concludes that financial crisis cannot be seen as the cause of earnings management. Finally, it suggests exploring other structures at work that might be responsible for earnings management
Earnings Management: Origins
No full textThis chapter seeks to describe the field of inquiry by defining the concepts of earnings quality, earnings management, fraud, and earnings manipulation. It presents the earnings management phenomenon, specifically, from whence it comes. It reviews the mainstream studies, and focuses on two types of earnings management: accruals earnings management and real activities earnings management. In addition, studies related to fraudulent financial reporting (or non-generally accepted accounting principles, i.e. non-GAAP earnings management) will be presented and discussed as well. Furthermore, this chapter presents studies on managerial incentives for earnings management. The most important incentives (or causes) for managing earnings are discussed and the contradictory results provided by some of them highlighted. Finally, a few offsetting causes that may interfere with these main incentives for managing earnings are presented
Financial Crisis as a Major Cause of Earnings Management: Theoretical Background and Literature Review
No full textThis chapter approaches the question of the relationship between financial crisis and earnings management. It presents a review of studies that identified financial crisis as a major cause of earnings management. Previous research on the impact of financial crisis on managers’ earnings management behavior has yielded ambiguous results, depicting different scenarios depending on the choice of firm context/type, and on the start date of the financial crisis. The results show that there is a lack of consensus on the direction and magnitude of earnings management in times of recession. Results of the performed literature review will be operationalized into a hypothesis presented in the following Chap. 5. Therefore, this chapter is essentially propaedeutic to Chap. 5
A Critical Realist Perspective on Earnings Management
No full textPrior studies have provided little evidence of earnings management activities although research designs have included the widespread use of strong incentives to manage earnings; i.e., a widespread approach in the earnings management literature is to first identify conditions in which managers’ incentives to manage earnings are likely to be strong, and then test whether patterns of earnings management are observable. Furthermore, the evidence provided by prior studies is often conflicted on what motivates managers to manage earnings. This chapter shifts away from the contradictory conclusions drawn on the causes of earnings management presented by prior positivist research (discussed in Chap. 2 ). It introduces critical realism as an alternative to the positivist philosophical perspective to investigate the earnings management phenomenon. Finally, it provides a critical realist evaluation of mainstream earnings management literature and related incentives (or identified causes) that have been proposed by prior studies for managing earnings
A literature based picture of legally registered mafia companies
No full textThe literature review aims at describing legally-registered Mafia firms that is,
companies, apparently engage in lawful activities, listed in the commercial register, but
owned by a Mafia family. Academic interest is most certainly focused on the Italian national
level. However, more than one scholar has looked into this phenomenon, even outside of
national borders
Evaluating risks-based communities of Mafia companies: a complex networks perspective
Full text linkThis paper presents a data-driven complex network approach, to show similarities and differences—in terms of financial risks—between the companies involved in organized crime businesses and those who are not. At this aim, we construct and explore two networks under the assumption that highly connected companies hold similar financial risk profiles of large entity. Companies risk profiles are captured by a statistically consistent overall risk indicator, which is obtained by suitably aggregating four financial risk ratios. The community structures of the networks are analyzed under a statistical perspective, by implementing a rank-size analysis and by investigating the features of their distributions through entropic comparisons. The theoretical model is empirically validated through a high quality dataset of Italian companies. Results highlights remarkable differences between the considered sets of companies, with a higher heterogeneity and a general higher risk profiles in companies traceable back to a crime organization environment
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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