The shareholders or owner of the company can only rely
on reports from the company’s management to know the
state of his company. While the manager as the manager
of the company has the duty to find out more information
on the company's internal and prospects for the future,
giving rise to the information gap. This condition is often
referred to as information asymmetry (Jensen and
Meckling, 1976). Because of the asymmetry of
information, the owner of the company cannot know the
actual condition of the company so that the company's
management has the opportunity to perform earnings
management. Basically managers perform earnings
management to enhance shareholder value. This activity
actually may increase the value of the company at a
certain period but also may decrease the value of the
company in the future. Therefore, if the manager does
earnings management, the company's earnings will
improve as well as the performance of the company; if
the company increases the performance of the stock
market prices will increase as well (Ferdawati, 2009).
Based on the above, the third hypothesis formulation is
the effect of earnings management on firm value.