We test whether corporate governance mechanisms promoted by best practice codes are effective in constraining earnings manipulation for a Spanish sample of quoted companies during the period 1999-2001. In particular, we analyse the association between earnings management and two key aspects of corporate governance: board composition and the existence of board monitoring committees. Our results show that board composition significantly determines earnings manipulation practices. However, the main role in constraining such practices is not played by independent directors, as UK and US based research suggests, but by institutional directors. No correlation is found between the existence of an independent audit committee and earnings management measures. Finally, the existence and composition of a nomination committee affects the role of independent directors in constraining earnings manipulation. Copyright (c) 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Data availability is one of the traditional obstacles confronting researchers carrying out international empirical studies in accounting. In recent years several databases have claimed to offer comprehensive coverage of accounting and financial data of firms worldwide. We analyse whether the choice of database has an effect on the results of empirical studies. We find that the results of a simple empirical adaptation of the Ohlson (1995) model for fourteen member states of the European Union change significantly depending on the database chosen (Datastream, Global Vantage, Company Analysis, Worldscope, Thomson Financial, Financials and BvD Osiris). These differences are mainly attributable to differences in the samples across databases. When we match observations across all databases the differences persist but are much less pronounced. Our main conclusion is that database choice matters, as it leads to different results when the same research design is used.

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Following previous research (e.g. Dechow et al., 1995; Peasnell et al., 2000), we use a simulation procedure to evaluate the specification and power of different working capital abnormal accruals models in the Spanish context. Specifically, we assess the Jones Standard model, the Modified Jones model, the Kang and Sivaramakrishnan model, the Margin model, the Jones Cash Flow model, and the Accounting Process model. Consistent with previous research, our results suggest that all the models analysed are well specified in a random sample of firms. Regarding the models' ability to detect artificially induced earnings management, the Jones Cash Flow and the Accounting Process models produce the most powerful tests in all three types of manipulation studied. In line with Peasnell et al. (2000), we find that the Margin model is more powerful than the Jones Standard and the Modified Jones models at detecting non-bad debt expense manipulation, while these two models perform better than the Margin model for revenue and bad debt manipulation. Our results also support the finding by Dechow et al. (1995) that their modified version of the Jones model is more powerful than its standard version at detecting revenue-based manipulation.

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