Earnings Management: A Methodological Review of the Distribution of Reported Earnings Approach

Hayn (1995) first introduced the concept of the pooled, cross-sectional distribution of reported earnings approach to assess whether there is any evidence of earnings management. This approach was further developed by Burgstahler and Dichev (1997) and since then, a substantial volume of new research has applied this methodology to alternative earnings thresholds and in different operational settings. This paper evaluates some aspects of the methodology and its applicability to different settings and contexts. This paper shows that the choice of interval width is a critical consideration in the distribution of reported earnings approach and, therefore, results should include a variety of interval widths to illustrate the robustness of findings. It also demonstrates that when the peak of the distribution falls adjacent to a threshold, the distribution of reported earnings approach will not provide statistically reliable and robust results. Finally, it concludes that the assumption of symmetry used by Burgstahler and Dichev (1997) to test for the prevalence of earnings management can only be justified where there is a known symmetrical distribution for the data in question.

海恩（1995）首先引入了报告盈余的混合横截面分布方法这一概念，以评估是否存在盈余管理的任何证据。这一方法由布尔格斯塔勒和迪切夫（1997）进一步发展，从那时起，大量新的研究将这一方法应用于不同的盈余阈值以及不同的运营环境中。本文评估了该方法的一些方面以及它在不同环境和背景下的适用性。本文表明，区间宽度的选择是报告盈余分布方法中的一个关键考虑因素，因此，结果应包括多种区间宽度以说明研究结果的稳健性。它还表明，当分布的峰值靠近一个阈值时，报告盈余分布方法将无法提供统计上可靠和稳健的结果。最后，它得出结论，布尔格斯塔勒和迪切夫（1997）用于检验盈余管理普遍性的对称性假设只有在相关数据具有已知对称分布的情况下才合理。