IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/coacre/v32y2015i3p897-940.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ex Ante Severance Agreements and Earnings Management

Author

Listed:
  • Kareen E. Brown

Abstract

This research studies whether severance agreements may reduce fraudulent earnings management, and whether severance pay mitigates executives’ career concerns. In a sample of large U.S. firms, those with higher severance pay are less likely to be subject to accounting and auditing enforcement releases (AAERs) by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Among S&P 500 firms in the post†SOX period with premanaged earnings below analyst forecasts, firms with higher severance pay are less likely to meet/beat the analyst forecast using abnormal accruals. Overall, these results suggest that fear of losing a lucrative severance package, and/or the insurance offered by such a package curbs earnings management.

Suggested Citation

  • Kareen E. Brown, 2015. "Ex Ante Severance Agreements and Earnings Management," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 897-940, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:32:y:2015:i:3:p:897-940
    DOI: 10.1111/1911-3846.12103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12103
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1911-3846.12103?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
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Oz, Seda, 2024. "The impact of terrorist attacks and mass shootings on earnings management," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3).
    2. Peng, Qiyuan & Yin, Sirui, 2021. "Does the executive labor market discipline? Labor market incentives and earnings management," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 62-86.
    3. Hongkang Xu & Mai Dao & Jia Wu, 2019. "The effect of local political corruption on earnings quality," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 551-574, August.
    4. Wang Dong & Hongling Han & Yun Ke & Kam C. Chan, 2018. "Social Trust and Corporate Misconduct: Evidence from China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(2), pages 539-562, August.
    5. Nengqi Pan & Millicent Chang & Xiaofei Pan, 2024. "Career concerns and earnings management in government‐owned banks," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(1), pages 475-506, March.

    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:wly:coacre:v:32:y:2015:i:3:p:897-940. 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: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1911-3846 .

    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.