The evidence presented here was based on a sample of companies whose manipulation of earnings was publicly discovered. Such companies probably represent the upper tail of the distribution of companies that seek to influence their reported earnings—successful and undiscovered manipulators undoubtedly exist—so the evidence should be interpreted in that light. Given this caution, evidence has been presented here of a systematic association between earnings
manipulation and financial statement data that is of interest to accounting researchers and investment professionals. The evidence suggests that accounting data not only meet the test of providing useful information, but they also enable an assessment of the reliability of the reporting. The explicit classification model described here requires only two years
of data (one annual report) to evaluate the likelihood of manipulation and can be inexpensively applied
by the SEC, auditors, and investors to screen a large number of companies and identify potential manipulators for further investigation.