ویژگی های شرکت و سطح کشور به عنوان تعیین کننده های مدیریت سود Firm- and Country-Level Attributes as Determinants of Earnings Management: an Analysis for Latin American Firms

1. Introduction The lack of efficiently monitoring the managerial performance, the eradication of opportunistic behaviour, and the application of fair and appropriate–not perverse–incentives are real needs in current, more complex corporate environments. A tangible example of this has been the lack of efficient corporate governance systems that has contributed to recent worldwide financial crisis (Erkens, Hung, and Matos, 2012). Accounting scandals like Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, Lehman Brothers, and others have revealed the necessity of reinforcing the rules and regulations as well as enhancing internal governance systems towards a more transparent disclosure of the financial statements. Essentially, the financial markets could not anticipate the consequences of these scandals because the financial reports were opportunistically manipulated. Facts like these have been academically studied through the analysis of earnings management. Previous studies on earnings management have only partially considered the alternative corporate governance mechanisms in constraining managerial opportunistic behaviour. They have been focused on either firm-level or country-level variables. For instance, on the side of internal determinants of earnings management, Alves (2012) and Gabrielsen, Gramlich, and Plenborg (2002) examine the relationship between corporate ownership structure and earnings management for Portuguese and Danish firms, respectively. Dechow, Sloan, and Sweeney (1996) consider internal governance structures as boards of directors’ characteristics in constraining earnings management. Similarly, Warfield, Wild, and Wild (1995) analyse how managerial ownership level, as a firm-based variable, affects both the informativeness and consequences of earnings manipulation. In addition, Davidson, Goodwin-Stewart, and Kent (2005) investigate the role of a firm’s internal governance structure (e.g. board of directors, the audit committee, and the internal audit function) in constraining earnings management; whilst López and Saona (2005) study the ability of capital structure and ownership structure as control mechanisms to reduce managers’ accounting discretionary power for a sample of Chilean firms. Numerous other studies investigated similar relationships.