IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-00458894.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Les Indicateurs D'Asymétrie Sont-Ils Pertinents Pour Étudier Les Seuils Comptables ?

Author

Listed:
  • Olivier Vidal

    (GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Are asymmetry measures relevant to analyze accounting thresholds? Distributions of disclosed earnings are supposed to be smooth in the absence of earnings management. Irregularities have been observed around thresholds, suggesting earnings management. Recently, many studies have measured these irregularities in order to compare thresholds magnitude in space and over time. Most of these studies use asymmetry measures. The paper examines the theoretical limits of such indicators. The results of an empirical study tend to show that such indicators are myopic, and can drive to wrong interpretations.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Vidal, 2009. "Les Indicateurs D'Asymétrie Sont-Ils Pertinents Pour Étudier Les Seuils Comptables ?," Post-Print halshs-00458894, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00458894
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00458894
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00458894/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Burgstahler & Michael Eames, 2006. "Management of Earnings and Analysts' Forecasts to Achieve Zero and Small Positive Earnings Surprises," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(5-6), pages 633-652.
    2. Bartov, Eli & Givoly, Dan & Hayn, Carla, 2002. "The rewards to meeting or beating earnings expectations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 173-204, June.
    3. Yu, Qiao & Du, Bin & Sun, Qian, 2006. "Earnings management at rights issues thresholds--Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(12), pages 3453-3468, December.
    4. Shen, Chung-Hua & Chih, Hsiang-Lin, 2005. "Investor protection, prospect theory, and earnings management: An international comparison of the banking industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(10), pages 2675-2697, October.
    5. Julie Cotter & Irem Tuna & Peter D. Wysocki, 2006. "Expectations Management and Beatable Targets: How Do Analysts React to Explicit Earnings Guidance?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(3), pages 593-624, September.
    6. Cindy Durtschi & Peter Easton, 2005. "Earnings Management? The Shapes of the Frequency Distributions of Earnings Metrics Are Not Evidence Ipso Facto," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 557-592, September.
    7. Leuz, Christian & Nanda, Dhananjay & Wysocki, Peter D., 2003. "Earnings management and investor protection: an international comparison," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 505-527, September.
    8. David Burgstahler & Michael Eames, 2006. "Management of Earnings and Analysts' Forecasts to Achieve Zero and Small Positive Earnings Surprises," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(5‐6), pages 633-652, June.
    9. Kasznik, R, 1999. "On the association between voluntary disclosure and earnings management," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 57-81.
    10. Burgstahler, David & Dichev, Ilia, 1997. "Earnings management to avoid earnings decreases and losses," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 99-126, December.
    11. Degeorge, Francois & Patel, Jayendu & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1999. "Earnings Management to Exceed Thresholds," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-33, January.
    12. David Holland & Alan Ramsay, 2003. "Do Australian companies manage earnings to meet simple earnings benchmarks?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 43(1), pages 41-62, March.
    13. David C. Burgstahler & Michael J. Eames, 2003. "Earnings Management to Avoid Losses and Earnings Decreases: Are Analysts Fooled?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(2), pages 253-294, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Olivier Vidal, 2011. "Comment mesurer les irrégularités de distribution des résultats publiés ?," Post-Print hal-02104086, HAL.

    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. Olivier Vidal, 2009. "Are asymmetry measures relevant to analyze accounting thresholds? [Les Indicateurs D'Asymétrie Sont- Ils Pertinents Pour Étudier Les Seuils Comptables ?]," Post-Print hal-02104099, HAL.
    2. Bilinski, Pawel & Lyssimachou, Danielle, 2018. "Dividend guidance to manage analyst dividend expectations," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 53-68.
    3. Stavros Degiannakis & George Giannopoulos & Salma Ibrahim & Ivana Rozic, 2019. "Earnings management to avoid losses and earnings declines in Croatia," International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 9(3), pages 219-238.
    4. Martin Nienhaus, 2022. "Executive equity incentives and opportunistic manager behavior: new evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 1276-1318, December.
    5. Olivier Vidal, 2010. "Gestion du résultat pour évite de publier une perte : les montants manipulés sont-ils marginaux ?," Post-Print hal-00840910, HAL.
    6. Dechow, Patricia & Ge, Weili & Schrand, Catherine, 2010. "Understanding earnings quality: A review of the proxies, their determinants and their consequences," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 344-401, December.
    7. Gilliam, Thomas A. & Heflin, Frank & Paterson, Jeffrey S., 2015. "Evidence that the zero-earnings discontinuity has disappeared," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 117-132.
    8. Olivier Vidal, 2010. "What should an unmanaged earnings distribution look like?," Post-Print hal-00840715, HAL.
    9. Xingqiang Du & Wei Jian & Shaojuan Lai & Yingjie Du & Hongmei Pei, 2015. "Does Religion Mitigate Earnings Management? Evidence from China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 699-749, October.
    10. Lawrence D. Brown & Arianna Spina Pinello, 2007. "To What Extent Does the Financial Reporting Process Curb Earnings Surprise Games?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(5), pages 947-981, December.
    11. Chang, Chu-Hsuan & Lin, Hsiou-Wei William, 2018. "Does there prevail momentum in earnings management for seasoned equity offering firms?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 111-129.
    12. Holger Daske & Günther Gebhardt & Stuart McLeay, 2006. "The distribution of earnings relative to targets in the European Union," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 137-167.
    13. Wang, Weishen & Graefe-Anderson, Rachel & Pyles, Mark K. & Kim, Dongnyoung, 2014. "How entrenched managers beat earnings expectations before and after SOX," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 82-91.
    14. Olivier Vidal, 2011. "Comment mesurer les irrégularités de distribution des résultats publiés ?," Post-Print hal-02104086, HAL.
    15. Thomas Dilger & Sabine Graschitz, 2015. "Influencing Factors on Earnings Management, Empirical Evidence from Listed German and Austrian Companies," International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research (IJBESAR), International Hellenic University (IHU), Kavala Campus, Greece (formerly Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology - EMaTTech), vol. 8(2), pages 69-86, October.
    16. Pelham Gore & Peter Pope & Ashni Singh, 2007. "Earnings management and the distribution of earnings relative to targets: UK evidence," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 123-149.
    17. Xia, Jingjing, 2023. "Redrawing the line: Narrowly beating analyst forecasts and journalists’ co-coverage choices in earnings-related news articles," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3).
    18. Bird, Andrew & Karolyi, Stephen A. & Ruchti, Thomas G., 2019. "Understanding the “numbers game”," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2).
    19. Habib, Ahsan & Hossain, Mahmud, 2008. "Do managers manage earnings to ‘just meet or beat’ analyst forecasts?," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 79-91.
    20. Edmund Keung & Zhi‐Xing Lin & Michael Shih, 2010. "Does the Stock Market See a Zero or Small Positive Earnings Surprise as a Red Flag?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 105-136, March.

    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:hal:journl:halshs-00458894. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.