Research Design
Earnings Management
Because managers may have incentives to manage accruals/earnings upwards and
downwards, consistent with previous research (e.g. Becker et al. 1998), we use the absolute
value of discretionary accruals to measure earnings management. Discretionary accruals
are estimated using the cross-sectional modified Jones model (Dechow et al. 1995).12 Using
such an approach, actual total accruals are compared with forecasted total accruals from
an accrual prediction model. The differences between actual total accruals and predicted
accruals, TAC, are calculated as the difference between income before extraordinary items
(COMPUSTAT #123) and operating cash flows (COMPUSTAT #308), net of cash flows
from extraordinary items (COMPUSTAT #124) scaled by lagged total assets (COMPUSTAT
#6). Total accruals are scaled by total assets to control for firm size effect. In fact, ‘‘total
accruals are assumed to represent discretionary accruals, or earnings management. Similar
to the accrual measure in Bharath et al. (2007) and Hribar and Collins (2002), actual total