Credit unions play a relevant role in providing microcredit and other financial services. Because such financial cooperative organizations have drawn the attention of a significant and growing academic literature, a bibliometric study becomes essential. This study comprehensively analyzes the literature on credit unions using the leading indices for bibliometric examination: Elsevier's Scopus and Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science databases. Our searches reveal a high level of complementarity between the databases concerning the subject. Their combined use has enabled us to extensively trace the evolution of studies on the subject regarding volume and impact. We identify the major countries, journals, authors, articles, intellectual basis and topics. Further, using CiteSpace, we have mapped the networks of co-authorship, co-citations, and co-keywords in credit union research. The findings allow us to conclude that economics and business finance are the principal areas of credit union research although articles in sociology and history were also observed. Finally, by investigating contemporary co-keywords clusters and future research directions, we identify four main avenues of research: economic performance, corporate governance, accounting and disclosure and, credit union to bank comparisons regarding customer relationships and technology.

This article investigates the practice of earnings management by Brazilian credit unions. The main focus is to check for the existence of earnings management to meet the capital adequacy requirements imposed by the Brazilian Central Bank, in line with the Basel Accords. The study also examines the occurrence of income smoothing across credit unions as well as earnings management to avoid reporting losses. The results indicate that the studied institutions do not manage their earnings towards regulatory capital adequacy, but they do engage in income smoothing and earnings management to avoid reporting losses.

O objetivo geral foi realizar uma revisão bibliográfica sistemática nos artigos disponíveis na base Web of Science que pesquisaram o gerenciamento de resultados (EM) concomitante às transações de Fusões e Aquisições (F&A). Especificamente: i) verificar quais foram as principais discussões sobre o tema; ii) criar categorias analíticas para ordenar as discussões; e, iii) elaborar uma síntese do conhecimento existente sobre o assunto. A amostra envolveu 40 artigos registrados entre os anos de 1945 e nov/2016. Foi utilizado o método de revisão bibliográfica sistemática para a análise de conteúdo qualitativa. As estratégias de busca utilizaram rótulos de campo e operadores boolianos com expressões definidas a priori. Os resultados apontam 11 categorias analíticas e, pelo menos, 43 elementos essenciais inerentes a essas categorias. Grande maioria dos resultados mostra que há interesse na utilização do EM próximo aos anúncios e efetivação das F&A. Diversos pesquisadores analisaram o EM voltado para manipulação dos accruals no sentido de elevar o lucro. Outros, em menor quantidade, introduziram a importância de verificar as manipulações de atividades reais com base na DFC. Trabalhos futuros poderiam relacionar information asymmetry com as transações de F&A e as potenciais interferências do EM, tanto por accruals quanto por atividades reais.

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