The Impact of Earnings Management on the Predictive Ability of Accruals in Listed Companies in Tehran Stock Exchange (Implications for Earnings Quality)

Abstract

One of the objectives of business entity' financial reporting is rendering useful information for making commercial and economic decisions. That information is useful for commercial and economic decisions that could be able to predict amount, timing, and uncertainty of future cash flows. Since earning management is performed by using accruals, and also excess use of accruals decreases earning quality and following that, predictive ability of earnings, this notion exists that earning management decreases the predictive ability of future earnings. In this study it was tried that through classification of companies and formulation of research hypothesis, evaluate the effect of earning management on the predictive ability of earning components and also it was tried to express whether earning management can have increasing effect on predictive ability of earnings components or not? So in this study it was used from financial reports of Listed Companies in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), in time interval between 2000 up to 2010. The effect of earning management on predictive ability accruals was tested. Results produced by this research shows that earning management despite this notion that it always reduces the predictive ability, can increase the predictive ability of earning.

Keywords

• : earning management
• predictive ability of earning
• accruals
• discretionary accruals
• non-discretionary accruals