This paper analyses financial performance adjustment in English local governments and the specific accruals used to achieve it. Based on statistical approaches used in previous literature, our results indicate the use of abnormal accruals in English local governments in order to report surpluses/deficits close to zero as well as to avoid reporting big deficits. We find that depreciation and impairment expense of fixed assets is the item most significantly related to abnormal accruals. Consistent with the conservatism theory, local governments with higher leverage use more income‐decreasing accounting policies.
The objective of this study is to analyze, from a multi-theoretical framework, whether the managers of the Spanish National Sports Federations (NSFs) apply earnings management using accounting accruals as a measure of managerial discretion; secondly, whether these practices are associated with both the level of dependence on external resources, and the economic and financial control mechanisms exercised by the Superior Sports Council (Consejo Superior de Deportes, CSD) for the granting of public subsidies. The study provides evidence that long-term debt levels and the size of sports federations are determinants of earnings management, with a more accentuated relationship in the case of Olympic and Paralympic sports federations.
This paper studies the market's reaction to 660 earnings announcements made during the period 1991-95 in Spain. This period starts shortly after the completion of the revision of Spanish financial accounting practices to bring them into line with EC requirements. As expected, we find that the earnings disclosures are accompanied by abnormal volatility; however, we also discover positive abnormal returns and an upward shift in beta. Furthermore, both expected and unexpected changes in earnings have explanatory power for abnormal returns accompanying earnings announcements - although this result is largely driven by the smaller firms in the sample. This evidence is consistent with a change in the risk-return relationship and with unsophisticated investors neglecting value-relevant information.
The objective of this paper is to determine the effects of the corporate governance practices of central government agencies on the reliability of financial reporting. There has been a considerable growth of these agencies across countries, and there are no studies about the relationship between the features of their corporate governance and the level of reliability of their financial reports. This paper provides evidence of systematic upward earnings management by agencies that apply the Private Sector Chart of Accounts to improve their financial performance and to compensate for the reduction of revenues during the worst years of the financial crisis. The results also show that abnormal accruals have a significant and inverse relationship with the percentage of independent directors and women on the boards, i.e., diversity improves the reliability of the financial information of these entities.
El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar los efectos que tienen las prácticas de gobierno corporativo de las agencias públicas estatales sobre la fiabilidad de su información financiera. Se ha producido un considerable aumento de estas agencias en muchos países; sin embargo, no hay estudios sobre la relación entre las características de su gobierno corporativo y el nivel de fiabilidad de sus estados financieros. Este artículo proporciona evidencia de que hay una estrategia de aumentar el resultado entre las agencias que aplican el Plan General de Contabilidad, para mejorar su rendimiento financiero y compensar la reducción de ingresos durante los peores años de la crisis financiera. En relación al gobierno corporativo, los resultados también muestran que los devengos discrecionales tienen una relación inversa significativa con el porcentaje de consejeros independientes y mujeres en los consejos, esto es, la diversidad del consejo mejora la fiabilidad de la información financiera de estas entidades.
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