Moderating Effect of Ownership Structure on the Relation between Financial Statement Comparability and Earnings Management

Abstract

Comparability is among the key qualitative characteristics of accounting information, which can be affected by various factors like management motivation and earnings management. On the other hand, ownership structure is a corporate governance mechanism that can affect different aspects of an enterprise. The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating effect of ownership structure on the relation between accounting comparability and earnings management. The population of this research includes all listed companies on Tehran Stock Exchange. The sample consists of 120 listed manufacturing firms from the period 2005 to 2016. This research uses panel data and multivariate regression methods (with controlled effects of years and industries) for data analysis and hypothesis testing. The empirical results from testing the first hypothesis imply a significant negative relation between comparability and earnings management. The findings from testing the second hypothesis show that any increase of institutional ownership may cushion the negative impact of earnings management on financial statement comparability. The results from testing the third hypothesis cannot find any significant impact of ownership concentration on the relation between financial statement comparability and earnings management.

Keywords

• comparability
• earnings management
• ownership structure