Orphans Deserve Attention: Financial Reporting in the Missing Months When Corporations Change Fiscal Year
53 Pages Posted: 31 May 2010 Last revised: 6 Sep 2011
There are 2 versions of this paper
Orphans Deserve Attention: Financial Reporting in the Missing Months When Corporations Change Fiscal Year
Orphans Deserve Attention: Financial Reporting in the Missing Months When Corporations Change Fiscal Year
Date Written: September 5, 2011
Abstract
We examine firms’ financial reporting practices during stub periods that are induced by fiscal year changes and not covered by regular quarters. We find that firms report much lower income for the missing months than for adjacent quarters, mainly by recording higher operating expenses. We also find that managers have various incentives to manage earnings. Executive compensation is not tied to firm performance in the transition period as it is in adjacent fiscal years. Growth firms, firms with poor stock returns, and firms with poor external and internal monitoring tend to manage earnings more. Finally, we find that firms are more likely to meet or beat earnings targets in the subsequent quarter by reporting lower income in the missing months. Investors and analysts perceive the earnings surprise to be less persistent in the quarter after the missing months than in the quarter before.
Keywords: Financial reporting, earnings management, accruals, return, fiscal year-end
JEL Classification: G10, G12, G14, G30, M40, M41, M49
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Detecting Earnings Management: A New Approach
By Patricia Dechow, Amy P. Hutton, ...
-
A Review of the Earnings Management Literature and its Implications for Standard Setting
-
Errors in Estimating Accruals: Implications for Empirical Research
By Daniel W. Collins and Paul Hribar
-
The Economic Implications of Corporate Financial Reporting
By John R. Graham, Campbell R. Harvey, ...
-
The Economic Implications of Corporate Financial Reporting
By John R. Graham, Campbell R. Harvey, ...
-
On the Association between Voluntary Disclosure and Earnings Management
By Ron Kasznik
-
Performance Matched Discretionary Accrual Measures
By S.p. Kothari, Andrew J. Leone, ...
-
The Quality of Accruals and Earnings: The Role of Accrual Estimation Errors
By Ilia D. Dichev and Patricia Dechow