IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/joares/v43y2005i1p1-33.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Insiders Manipulate Earnings When They Sell Their Shares in an Initial Public Offering?

Author

Listed:
  • MASAKO DARROUGH
  • SRINIVASAN RANGAN

Abstract

In this article we examine whether insider share selling in an initial public offering (IPO) influences R&D expenditures. Insiders (managers and venture capitalists) who sell their pre‐offering shareholdings might try to increase the IPO offer price (1) by overinvesting in R&D to signal the firm's prospects (the signaling hypothesis) or (2) by underinvesting in R&D to increase current reported earnings (the earnings fixation hypothesis). We find that, for a sample of 243 IPOs from 1986 to 1990, change in R&D spending in the year of the IPO is negatively related to managerial selling. Because reductions in R&D spending increase current earnings at the expense of future earnings, our evidence suggests that managers believe that investors place more emphasis on current earnings and less emphasis on R&D and therefore spend less on R&D. We also document a positive association between discretionary current accruals in the offering year and managerial selling, suggesting that selling managers manipulate accruals as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Masako Darrough & Srinivasan Rangan, 2005. "Do Insiders Manipulate Earnings When They Sell Their Shares in an Initial Public Offering?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 1-33, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:43:y:2005:i:1:p:1-33
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-679x.2004.00161.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-679x.2004.00161.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1475-679x.2004.00161.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:43:y:2005:i:1:p:1-33. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-8456 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.