4. Model development
Although the phrase “earnings quality” is widely used, there is neither an agreed-upon
meaning assigned to the phrase nor a generally accepted approach to measuring
earnings quality. There are three basic approaches to measure the quality of earnings
which control three different dimensions of earning management.
The first approach is focusing on the variability of earnings based on the idea that
managers tend to smooth income because they believe that the investors prefer
smoothly increased income. The notion of this approach is the relative absence of
variability – is sometimes associated with higher-quality earnings. Leuz et al. (2003)
measures the variability of earnings by calculating the ratio of the standard deviation
of operating earnings to the standard deviation of cash from operations (smaller ratios
imply more income smoothing).
The second approach is suggested by Barton and Simko (2002), which is focusing
on the idea of earnings surprise as reflected in the beginning balance of net operating
assets relative to sales. They provide empirical evidence that firms with large
beginning balance of net operating assets relative to sales are less likely to report a
predetermined earnings surprise.
The third approach is focusing on the ratio of cash from operation to income, this
measuring of earnings quality is based on the notion that the closeness to cash means
higher quality earnings, as mentioned by Penman (2001), this is the simplest technique
to measure the earnings quality.
The model will use these three approaches to measure the quality of earnings, the
notion is; the result of each measure will be different based on the type of industry,
market capitalization, number of employees, and many other factors. If one industry
(company) is showing low quality of earnings according to the three approaches, that
will confirm the existence of earnings management in that industry (company). On the
other hand if there is no consistency among the three measures for one industry or
company, the quality of earning will be questionable and needs further investigations
and analysis. Finally, if there is consistency among the three measures for one industry
(company) that will confirm that the accounting information represents the real
economic performance of the industry without any interference from the management.
Table I presents the three-dimension model.