IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vrs/crebss/v5y2019i2p90-100n8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The empirical analysis of financial reports of companies in Croatia: Benford distribution curve as a benchmark for first digits

Author

Listed:
  • Cunjak Mataković Ivana

    (Centar-revizija d.o.o., Croatia)

Abstract

The financial numbers game is unfortunately alive and doing well. One of the forensic accounting techniques is based on Benford’s Law and is used for the detection of unusual transactions, anomalies or trends. The aim of this paper is to test whether the financial statements of Croatian companies deviate from Benford’s Law distribution. The financial statements of 24 companies that are in the pre-bankruptcy settlement process and 24 companies that are not in the pre-bankruptcy settlement process were analysed using the Benford’s Law test of the first digit distribution for the period from 2015 to 2018. The data used to calculate the first digits of distribution were taken from the Zagreb Stock Exchange. The chi-square test has shown that the observed companies that are not in the process of pre-bankruptcy settlement do not have the first digit distribution which follows the Benford’s Law distribution. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z test has shown that the distribution of the first digits from the financial statements of companies listed on the Zagreb Stock Exchange fits to Benford’s Law distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Cunjak Mataković Ivana, 2019. "The empirical analysis of financial reports of companies in Croatia: Benford distribution curve as a benchmark for first digits," Croatian Review of Economic, Business and Social Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 5(2), pages 90-100, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:vrs:crebss:v:5:y:2019:i:2:p:90-100:n:8
    DOI: 10.2478/crebss-2019-0014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2478/crebss-2019-0014
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2478/crebss-2019-0014?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernhard Rauch & Max Göttsche & Gernot Brähler & Stefan Engel, 2011. "Fact and Fiction in EU‐Governmental Economic Data," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(3), pages 243-255, August.
    2. Diekmann Andreas & Jann Ben, 2010. "Benford’s Law and Fraud Detection: Facts and Legends," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 11(3), pages 397-401, August.
    3. Shi, Jing & Ausloos, Marcel & Zhu, Tingting, 2018. "Benford’s law first significant digit and distribution distances for testing the reliability of financial reports in developing countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 492(C), pages 878-888.
    4. Natasa Omerzu & Iztok Kolar, 2019. "Do the Financial Statements of Listed Companies on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange Pass the Benford’s Law Test?," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(1), pages 54-64, January.
    5. repec:bla:germec:v:11:y:2010:i::p:397-401 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ausloos, Marcel & Ficcadenti, Valerio & Dhesi, Gurjeet & Shakeel, Muhammad, 2021. "Benford’s laws tests on S&P500 daily closing values and the corresponding daily log-returns both point to huge non-conformity," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 574(C).
    2. Natasa Omerzu & Iztok Kolar, 2019. "Do the Financial Statements of Listed Companies on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange Pass the Benford’s Law Test?," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(1), pages 54-64, January.
    3. El Mouaaouy Florian & Riepe Jan, 2018. "Benford and the Internal Capital Market: A Useful Indicator of Managerial Engagement," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 19(3), pages 309-329, August.
    4. Florian El Mouaaouy & Jan Riepe, 2018. "Benford and the Internal Capital Market: A Useful Indicator of Managerial Engagement," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 19(3), pages 309-329, August.
    5. Etienne Harb & Nohade Nasrallah & Rim El Khoury & Khaled Hussainey, 2022. "Applying Benford’s Law to detect accounting data manipulation in the pre-and post-financial engineering periods: Evidence from Lebanon," Working Papers of LaRGE Research Center 2022-10, Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie (LaRGE), Université de Strasbourg.
    6. Willis A. Jones, 2020. "A Benford Analysis of National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Finance Data," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(3), pages 234-255, April.
    7. Venuka Aggarwal & Khushdeep Dharni, 2020. "Deshelling the Shell Companies Using Benford’s Law: An Emerging Market Study," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 45(3), pages 160-169, September.
    8. Aineas Kostas Mallios, 2023. "Manipulation in reported dividends: Empirical evidence from US banks," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 43(1), pages 441-461.
    9. Ausloos, Marcel & Cerqueti, Roy & Bartolacci, Francesca & Castellano, Nicola G., 2018. "SME investment best strategies. Outliers for assessing how to optimize performance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 509(C), pages 754-765.
    10. Timothy C. Irwin, 2015. "Defining The Government'S Debt And Deficit," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 711-732, September.
    11. Kauko, Karlo, 2019. "Benford's law and Chinese banks' non-performing loans," BOFIT Discussion Papers 25/2019, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    12. Stenfors, Alexis, 2018. "Bid-ask spread determination in the FX swap market: Competition, collusion or a convention?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 78-97.
    13. Samà, Danilo, 2014. "Essays on economic analysis of competition law: theory and practice," MPRA Paper 103118, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Clippe, Paulette & Ausloos, Marcel, 2012. "Benford’s law and Theil transform of financial data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(24), pages 6556-6567.
    15. Samà, Danilo, 2014. "Cartel Detection and Collusion Screening: An Empirical Analysis of the London Metal Exchange," MPRA Paper 55363, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Faraji Kasidi & H. Chaturvedi & Rahul Singh, 2010. "Detecting Data Error and Inaccuracy," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 4(4), pages 405-425, November.
    17. Miranda-Zanetti, Maximilano & Delbianco, Fernando & Tohmé, Fernando, 2019. "Tampering with inflation data: A Benford law-based analysis of national statistics in Argentina," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 525(C), pages 761-770.
    18. Holz, Carsten A., 2014. "The quality of China's GDP statistics," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 309-338.
    19. Roy Cerqueti & Claudio Lupi, 2021. "Some New Tests of Conformity with Benford’s Law," Stats, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-17, September.
    20. Montag, Josef, 2017. "Identifying odometer fraud in used car market data," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 10-23.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Benford’s Law; Chi-square goodness-of-fit test; first digits; forensic accounting; Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z test;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance
    • M4 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting

    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:vrs:crebss:v:5:y:2019:i:2:p:90-100:n:8. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.com .

    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.