Earnings Management in Australian Corporations

This article surveys the literature examining the earnings management behaviour of Australian corporations. While numerous motivations for earnings management are proposed in this literature, current period CEO turnover is the only phenomenon for which there is consistent empirical support. A number of studies report discontinuities in the distribution of earnings around benchmarks such as the zero profit level. However, there is no evidence that these discontinuities are associated with abnormal accrual behaviour. Evidence regarding the ability of various governance mechanisms to constrain earnings management is also mixed. While several studies report a negative relation between auditor size and earnings management, no Australian studies attempt to control for the likely endogenous nature of this relationship. Papers report that board independence and audit committee independence constrain earnings management in Australian corporations, although evidence is not consistent across studies. The article shows that many Australian studies of earnings management use very noisy and, in some cases, biased measures of abnormal accruals which may partly explain the inconsistency of results across studies, adding further uncertainty regarding the implications of this field of research for standard setters, investors and scholars.

本文综述了研究澳大利亚公司盈余管理行为的文献。虽然该文献中提出了盈余管理的众多动机，但当期首席执行官（CEO）更替是唯一得到一致实证支持的现象。多项研究报告了盈余分布在诸如零利润水平等基准附近的不连续性。然而，没有证据表明这些不连续性与异常应计行为有关。关于各种治理机制约束盈余管理能力的证据也是喜忧参半。虽然有几项研究报告了审计师规模与盈余管理之间存在负相关关系，但澳大利亚没有研究试图控制这种关系可能存在的内生性。有论文报告称，董事会独立性和审计委员会独立性对澳大利亚公司的盈余管理有约束作用，尽管不同研究的证据并不一致。文章表明，许多澳大利亚的盈余管理研究使用了非常不准确的、在某些情况下有偏差的异常应计衡量方法，这可能部分解释了不同研究结果的不一致性，从而进一步增加了这一研究领域对准则制定者、投资者和学者的影响的不确定性。