Model Specification
This study employs regression analytical
technique for cross›sectional data analyses to
substantiate whether and how budgetary slack
associate with discretionary accruals. The final
sample in this study is partitioned into (i) firms
that achieved their annual earnings targets and firms
that did not (for robustness test, this study also
partitions the sample into firms that achieved their
annual earnings targets before managing earnings
and the firms that did not), and (ii) firms that chose
income-increasing and income›decreasing earnings
management, to separately examine the linkage o
Growth opportunity (GROWTH), percentage
change in sales›High growth firms have incentives
to manage earnings to avoid earnings disappointments
and the literature also reports that high growth firms
have higher discretionary accruals even after
controlling for financial performance (McNichols,