This book is a study of earnings management, aimed at scholars and professionals in accounting, finance, economics, and law. The authors address research questions including: Why are earnings so important that firms feel compelled to manipulate them? What set of circumstances will induce earnings management? How will the interaction among management, boards of directors, investors, employees, suppliers, customers and regulators affect earnings management? How to design empirical research addressing earnings management? What are the limitations and strengths of current empirical models?

This book provides researchers and scholars with a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of earnings management theory and literature. While it raises new questions for future research, the book can be also helpful to other parties who rely on financial reporting in making decisions like regulators, policy makers, shareholders, investors, and gatekeepers e.g., auditors and analysts. The book summarizes the existing literature and provides insight into new areas of research such as the differences between earnings management, fraud, earnings quality, impression management, and expectation management; the trade-off between earnings management activities; the special measures of earnings management; and the classification of earnings management motives based on a comprehensive theoretical framework.

Includes research papers that examines various issues including the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs), management accounting change in the context of public sector reforms, corporate reporting disclosures, auditing, etcetera.

"This book discusses the accounting policies firms use in different opportunistic circumstances in order to manage earnings, and to understand the corporate governance practices in different countries, and its relationship to firms' performance, and other dimensions of companies"--

ESSENTIAL TOOLS AND STRATEGIES FOR DETECTING MANIPULATION. As recent corporate scandals prove, corrupt companies can maintain a façade of financial success through manipulation and fraud almost to the day they file for bankruptcy. Fortunately, tools exists to detect aggressive earnings management. This timely book reviews the current environment, explains the tools that can be used to detect a manipulative financial environment, and introduces techniques for recasting financial information to get a truer economic picture. Brief cases reflecting a variety of companies provide a feel for evaluating public data and how earning management potential can be analyzed. In addition, an appendix features a complete earnings management detection checklist that can be used to conduct a thorough analysis of any corporation. Detecting Earning Management will help readers: Identify the incentive of management to manipulate earning to promote their own short-term interests. Evaluate the effectiveness of corporate governance to limit short-term manipulation and promote long-term success. Consider whether recent regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, will limit future abuse. Review the major fraud techniques used in the recent and not-so-recent scandals. Identify the potential areas of manipulation and other sources of distortion and develop appropriate detection strategies. Understand the challenging areas that can distort financial reality such as acquisitions, derivatives, and special purpose entities.