Accounting standard boards (IASB and FASB) are aimed at designing high-quality standards able to increase transparency and comparability of financial reporting. They have chosen fair value accounting (FVA) approach to improve the quality of financial reporting and at the same time help financial reporting users in the decision-making process. During recent years, an intense debate has arisen about the trade-off between relevance and reliability of accounting information using this approach. Many authors outline problems related to the fair value hierarchy valuation of financial instruments, in particular, the discretionary use of unobservable inputs in financial instruments valuation process in support of earnings management. Tutino and Pompili (2018) have identified a general negative correlation between the extent of FVA and earning quality. Stating this, the main objective of the paper, using the same approach of the previous one, is to identify the specific impacts of unobservable inputs on earning quality. Theory and previous literature suggest a major negative impact of unobservable inputs than observable ones on the quality of information provided within financial reporting. Results show a negative and strong relationship between FVA and earning quality for US banks that do not depend on the hierarchy of input used in the evaluation process. These results suggest new considerations on the reliability of fair value concerning the possibilities of manipulation given to the management with this approach.

The purpose of the present work was to gauge the extent of the impact on earnings management derived from the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 15 as well as detecting whether the impact will be similar in different industries. To provide empirical evidence that earnings management is more frequent in some industries and less frequent in others by means of a statistical analysis, a sample of Italian listed companies in the period 2001-2017 was observed. Specifically, companies belonging to two sectors were selected: "Telecommunications" and "Utilities". The Jones Model was applied. The statistical analysis brought to light that earnings management practices are "commonly adopted" in the "Telecommunications" industry, which is consequently highly impacted by the introduction of IFRS 15. That being said, the lesson learned from this study is that the implementation of the new principle, written to discipline the accountancy of revenues, and its consequences, must be carefully analyzed and monitored by the regulators, as well as correctly adopted by managers, as the determined revenues could have an impact on the pre-existing earning management practices. The scientific contribution of the present research also concerns the predictions on the behavior of managers that can be foreseen considering the agency theory; therefore, knowing ex-ante in which industries earnings management has a high impact, provides the option to foresee the hypothetical moves of the managers in the implementation of IFRS 15.

This paper explains the main features of accounting fraud across an examination of the current literature by putting the environment and the different ways to prevent fraud under a microscope. The study analyses in five steps how corporate governance, ethical behaviour, accounting manipulation, detection techniques and forensic accounting are related to fraud. After having reviewed the most relevant literature on the topic, it emerged that in order to avoid fraudulent behaviour in a company, it is important, mostly, to establish an ethical education between employees and executives. Therefore, this article examines how governance elements such as board, CEO, or remuneration, influence the occurrence of fraud inside companies. Last but not at least, it has been seen how the role of forensic accountant has revealed itself as being very useful for his varied expertise, which have been analysed, and has been positioned as one of the top 20 future jobs.

Accounting standard boards (IASB and FASB) have chosen fair value accounting (FVA) approach to help financial reporting users in the decision-making process. During recent years, an intense debate arose about the trade-off between relevance and reliability of accounting information in this approach. Even if fair value based information could be considered highly relevant and helpful from an investor’s perspective, many authors outline problems related to fair value hierarchy valuation of financial instruments. In particular, the discretionary use of unobservable inputs in financial instruments valuation process can support earnings management strategy underlying the risk for emerging agency problems, moral hazard behaviour and management short-termism. Stating that, after providing a literature review focused on management behaviour related to FVA, the main objective of the paper is identifying possible relationships between FVA valuations and earning quality observing a sample of US and European banks listed in the period 2011-2016 based on Šodan model (Sodan, 2015). Results show a negative and strong relationship between FVA and earning quality for US banks; results for European listed banks do not provide any strong evidence.

The debate on fair value accounting is still open although the last 20 years have been spent in looking for solutions by academics, practitioners and institutions. After long and continuous discussion both on the basic concepts and the information level contained in fair value measurements and on the different solutions that are possible to adopt in mark to market measurements, IASB and FASB have recently issued new standards on fair value measurements applying some principles not only to financial instruments but also to property and other investments. To verify if the solutions adopted in these Standards really improve the disclosure level and the “usefulness of data for investors”, this paper analyzes the actual level of transparency and the “usefulness” of the “fair value hierarchy” (which from some points of view synthesized the Board’s way of thinking regarding to fair value) which has already been introduced for financial instruments by IFRS 7, Financial Instruments: Disclosure. The paper presents results of an empirical investigation on a sample of domestic and foreign listed banks that adopted fair value hierarchy in line with SFAS 157 and IFRS 7 recommendations. Research questions can be summarized as follows: (i) does fair value hierarchy improve transparency in financial instrument evaluation in bank annual reports, or can it be considered as a tool for earnings management?