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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