I find that managers manage earnings upward in the quarters preceding a debt-covenant
violation, but downward in the quarter a violation occurs. And they continue to manage
earnings downward while the firm remains in violation. Because this scenario can play out
within a year, the use of yearly data to examine the debt-covenant hypothesis can be problematic.
Further analysis shows that the earnings management around the debt-covenant
violation is also done to improve the manager’s bargaining power in the renegotiation that
follows the violation. Furthermore, I find no evidence of excessive earnings management by
high-debt firms to stave off a violation, but I do find evidence that the Sarbanes–Oxley Act
restrains managers from using accruals to stave off a violation. These results are based on
examining 193,803 firm-quarters, 8,804 firms, and 2,035 new covenant violations spanning
1996 to 2007.