/AS(0,1) is an indicator variable that equals one for LAS firms and zero for NIAS firms, and SPOS is an indicator variable that equals one if net income scaled by total assets is between 0 and 0.01 (Lang, Raedy, and Yetman [2003]). A negative coefficient on SPOS indicates that NIAS firms manage earnings toward small positive amounts more frequently than do IAS firms. We base our inferences on the coefficient on SPOS from equation (5) rather than directly comparing the IAS and NIAS firms’ percentages of small positive income because the SPOS coefficient reflects the effects of controls for factors unattributable to tire financial reporting system.
When comparing IAS firms in the post adoption and pre adoption periods, we estimate equation (6) pooling IAS firm observations from all sample years.