The Effect of External Audit Quality on Accrual-based Earnings Management: Evidence from the FTSE 100 CompaniesTools Xue, Rui (2020) The Effect of External Audit Quality on Accrual-based Earnings Management: Evidence from the FTSE 100 Companies. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)]
AbstractAlthough it is widely believed that high audit quality reduces managers’ ability to manage earnings, the accounting scandals of some well-known companies caused by aggressive earnings management have raised questions about the restrictive role of audit quality. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to explore the impact of external audit quality on accrual-based earnings management in an international context, and to provide guidance for audit quality. The magnitude of accrual-based earnings management is measured using the discretionary accruals estimated by the cross-sectional version of the modified Jones model (Dechow et al., 1995). Based on the final sample of 367 company-year observations composed of 85 companies in the FTSE 100 index from 2014 to 2018, this paper uses random-effects generalised least squares (GLS) regression to evaluate the respective relationships between client importance, non-audit services, audit firm tenure, audit partner tenure and discretionary accruals. The results only show that audit client importance diminishes the potential of accrual-based earnings management, while non-audit services provided by audit firms to audit clients increase the tendency of corporate managers to engage in accrual-based earnings management. Besides, the performance-adjusted modified Jones model (Kothari et al., 2005) is adopted for robustness testing, indicating that these main results can be considered robust. This research provides heuristic implications for investors and relevant UK regulators.
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