The Analysis of the Executive Overconfidence in Fraudulent Companies

Abstract

Executive overconfidence is one of the consequences of positive expectations about future performance, therefore failure to reach the specified goals may increase managers tendency to fraudulent financial reports. The purpose of this study is to analyze the behavior of executive overconfident in fraudulent companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. In this regard, capital expenditure and overinvestment are used as the indicators of executive overconfidence. Auditing standards are used to measure fraudulent companies. The study sample is 99 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (990 years - the company), including 334 fraud samples and 334 instances of non-fraud samples to control over 2005-2014 period. Due to the nature of the dependent variable and the homogeneity of the sample, Logit regression method is used to test the hypotheses. According to the results of this study, executive overconfidence based on capital expenditure is higher in fraudulent companies. Also, the result of the second hypothesis rejection is based on overinvestment criteria.

Keywords

• Capital Expenditure
• Executive Overconfidence
• Fraud
• Logit regression
• Overinvestment