Earnings management via discretionary accruals: would profits be reliable measures for investors?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21680/2176-9036.2021v13n1ID20159Keywords:
Earnings Management. Discretionary Accruals. Relevance of Accounting Information.Abstract
Purpose: The aim of this study was to analyze the relevance of profits in determining the market value of publicly traded companies in Brazil considering the effects of earnings management via discretionary accruals.
Methodology: The research sample was composed of 211 different non-financial companies from [B] ³ between 2013 and 2018. The data were analyzed initially from regressions with panel data and, additionally, as a measure of sensitivity analysis, through regressions estimated by minimum absolute deviations.
Results: Unlike what was expected a priori in the survey, it was noticed that the economic results reported by companies, when segregated from the earnings management proxy, showed less informational power in predicting companies' market value than economic results in their entirety. This outcome is apparently in line with some recent national surveys (Martins, Paulo & Monte, 2016; Marçal & Macedo, 2019) that highlight the non-opportunistic aspect of earnings management, and there may be signs of a nuance of the Brazilian market in contemporaneity in this regard.
Contributions of the Study: The results contribute in a practical way by making available to external users the effects of earnings management in the evaluation process of companies (specifically by demystifying the unanimous view of intent on the part of managers in the earnings management process). Nevertheless, a theoretical gap similar to that reported by Martins et al. (2016) is now partially supplied with these new findings.
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