Title: Investigation of earnings management based on unique country samples

Authors: Katarina Valaskova; Tomas Kliestik; Maria Kovacova; Peter Adamko; Elvira Nica

Addresses: Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communications, University of Zilina, Zilina, Slovak Republic ' Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communications, University of Zilina, Zilina, Slovak Republic ' Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communications, University of Zilina, Zilina, Slovak Republic ' Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communications, University of Zilina, Zilina, Slovak Republic ' Faculty of Administration and Public Management, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

Abstract: Earnings management creates financial statements that inflate earnings, revenue, or total assets. The paper describes the basic concepts of the earnings management phenomenon, reviews the mainstream studies and portrays the genesis of earnings models. The main aim of the paper was to assess the ability of selected earnings models applied in the national environment of Slovakia and Poland to reveal the earnings manipulation and to identify which of them reflect the country specificities more appropriately. The results showed that the Jones modified model should be used in Slovakia and the Key model in Poland to detect the earnings management. Moreover, it was revealed that companies in both countries tend to manipulate their earnings upwards and verified that there was a difference in earnings manipulation over the years. The important benefit of the paper is the identification of a variety of motives of earnings management influencing the upward manipulation with earnings in both countries.

Keywords: accounting principles; discretionary and non-discretionary accruals; earnings management; earnings models.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2024.138653

European Journal of International Management, 2024 Vol.23 No.2/3, pp.470 - 494

Received: 03 Aug 2019
Accepted: 27 Nov 2019
Published online: 23 May 2024 *

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