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Financial misstatement detection: a realistic evaluation

Author

Listed:
  • Elias Zavitsanos
  • Dimitris Mavroeidis
  • Konstantinos Bougiatiotis
  • Eirini Spyropoulou
  • Lefteris Loukas
  • Georgios Paliouras

Abstract

In this work, we examine the evaluation process for the task of detecting financial reports with a high risk of containing a misstatement. This task is often referred to, in the literature, as ``misstatement detection in financial reports''. We provide an extensive review of the related literature. We propose a new, realistic evaluation framework for the task which, unlike a large part of the previous work: (a) focuses on the misstatement class and its rarity, (b) considers the dimension of time when splitting data into training and test and (c) considers the fact that misstatements can take a long time to detect. Most importantly, we show that the evaluation process significantly affects system performance, and we analyze the performance of different models and feature types in the new realistic framework.

Suggested Citation

  • Elias Zavitsanos & Dimitris Mavroeidis & Konstantinos Bougiatiotis & Eirini Spyropoulou & Lefteris Loukas & Georgios Paliouras, 2023. "Financial misstatement detection: a realistic evaluation," Papers 2305.17457, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2305.17457
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sunita Goel & Jagdish Gangolly, 2012. "Beyond The Numbers: Mining The Annual Reports For Hidden Cues Indicative Of Financial Statement Fraud," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 75-89, April.
    2. Lynnette Purda & David Skillicorn, 2015. "Accounting Variables, Deception, and a Bag of Words: Assessing the Tools of Fraud Detection," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 1193-1223, September.
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    4. Bethany Hoogs & Thomas Kiehl & Christina Lacomb & Deniz Senturk, 2007. "A genetic algorithm approach to detecting temporal patterns indicative of financial statement fraud," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(1‐2), pages 41-56, January.
    5. repec:eme:maj000:02686900810890625 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Patricia M. Dechow & Weili Ge & Chad R. Larson & Richard G. Sloan, 2011. "Predicting Material Accounting Misstatements," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(1), pages 17-82, March.
    7. Mark Cecchini & Haldun Aytug & Gary J. Koehler & Praveen Pathak, 2010. "Detecting Management Fraud in Public Companies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(7), pages 1146-1160, July.
    8. Belinna Bai & Jerome Yen & Xiaoguang Yang, 2008. "False Financial Statements: Characteristics Of China'S Listed Companies And Cart Detecting Approach," International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(02), pages 339-359.
    9. Yang Bao & Bin Ke & Bin Li & Y. Julia Yu & Jie Zhang, 2020. "Detecting Accounting Fraud in Publicly Traded U.S. Firms Using a Machine Learning Approach," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 199-235, March.
    10. Ch. Spathis & M. Doumpos & C. Zopounidis, 2002. "Detecting falsified financial statements: a comparative study using multicriteria analysis and multivariate statistical techniques," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 509-535.
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    12. Fen-May Liou, 2008. "Fraudulent financial reporting detection and business failure prediction models: a comparison," Managerial Auditing Journal, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 23(7), pages 650-662, July.
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