This paper examines a novel form of classification shifting as an earnings management tool using a sample of 12,804 UK listed firm-year observations for the 1995-2014 period. It proposes a new approach to classification shifting whereby firms have scope to misclassify revenues from non-operating activities as operating revenues. The results establish that firms engage in classification shifting of non-operating revenues to inflate operating revenues.They indicate that firms in the period following mandatory IFRS adoption are associated with an increase in this practice, consistent with IFRS offering greater scope for manipulation.Further tests reveal that classification shifting of revenues is more pervasive for firms that report operating losses or have low growth.
While prior studies focus on real/accrual-based earnings management and expense misclassification to investigate earnings manipulation in avoiding covenant violations, this paper extends such research in a new direction. In particular, it examines whether firms employ classification shifting of revenues when they are subject to interest coverage EBITDA-based covenants close to their threshold values or limits. This earnings management tool allows firms to increase reported EBITDA by misclassifying non-operating revenues as operating revenues to remain within covenant limits that include EBITDA. Using a sample of 559 UK listed firmyears for the period 2005-2014, it establishes that the use of classification shifting of revenues is high when interest coverage covenants are close to their limits. Further analysis suggests that firms also employ revenue shifting when all their loan covenants are EBITDA-related.
This paper is devoted to the study of discrete optimal control problems. We aim to obtain more constructive optimality conditions under weakened convexity assumptions. Based on a new approach introduced in this work, an optimality condition with respect to every component is obtained in the form of a global maximum principle. In addition, an optimality condition with respect to one of the components of a control in the form of the global maximum principle and with respect to another component of a control in the form of the linearized maximum principle are obtained. Furthermore, various second-order optimality conditions in terms of singular and quasi-singular controls with respect to the components are obtained on the fly.
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