Gross profit manipulation in emerging economies: evidence from India

Purpose This study aims to explore peer performance as the motivation behind gross profit manipulation through two different channels, namely, cost of goods sold (COGS) misclassification and revenue misclassification. Design/methodology/approach Gross profit expectation model (Poonawala and Nagar, 2019) and operating revenue expectation model (Malikov et al., 2018) are used to measure COGS and revenue misclassification, respectively. The panel data regression models are used to analyze the data for this study. Findings The study results show that firms engage in gross profit manipulation to meet the industry’s average gross margin, implying that peer performance is an important benchmark that firms strive to achieve through misclassification strategies. Further results exhibit that firms prefer COGS misclassification over revenue misclassification for manipulating gross profit, implying that firms choose the shifting strategy based on the relative advantage of each shifting tool. Practical implications The findings suggest that firms that just meet or slightly beat industry-average profitability levels are highly likely to engage in classification shifting (CS). Thus, investors and analysts should be careful when evaluating such firms by comparing them with other firms in the same industry. Originality/value First, this study is among earlier attempts to investigate CS motivated by peer performance. Second, this study investigates both tools of gross profit manipulation by taking a uniform sample of firms over the same period and provides compelling evidence that firms prefer one shifting tool over another depending on the relative advantage of each shifting tool.

Corporate Governance as a Tool for Fraud Mitigation

Financial fraud through the falsification of financial statements is an evident problem. The restatement is enormous, and there have been developed many approaches to confront it. Profits manipulation has reached alarming proportions worldwide. The tendency of management to present a misleading image based on accounting weaknesses and gaps, to present accounting results as it wishes and not as it should according to the accounting standards, is essentially a key feature of profit manipulation. The executives' motives to falsify financial results and creative accounting practices have concerned researchers and their efforts to identify the necessary changes and improvements in accounting systems to protect the stakeholders and the public from misleading information.

How do insiders and outsiders affect most Japanese CEOs’ profit manipulation?

This study investigates how insiders and outsiders affect the earnings management of CEOs by conducting a comparative analysis of insiders, trust banks, outsiders, and global investors. Interestingly, the holding shares of insiders and outsiders have opposite effects on CEOs’ opportunistic accounting behaviours.

Testing the Effectiveness of Altman and Beneish Models in Detecting Financial Fraud and Financial Manipulation: Case Study Kuwaiti Stock

This study is an adoption of two probabilistic financial analysis methods, Altman and Beneish Models that have proven effective in early detection of possible financial distress and profit manipulation respectively. Motivated by the effectiveness of the models, this paper applies the methodology on the Kuwaiti Stock Market excluding banking and insurance companies. Results demonstrated that Altman has less predictive power in the context of industrial and real estate companies while Beneish has a strong predictive power to uncover possible manipulation in earnings or fraudulent reporting in the tested companies as confirmed with an ex-post review of the companies and news sources. We recommend a recalibration of the Altman model according to industry in addition to recommending that financial analysts and interested parties use both models.

Earnings management in global background

Earnings management is a general term in accounting decisions that may affect the results of the financial statements. Financial statements represent the core of information is used not only by internal but also external entities. Their role is to provide a true picture of the financial situation and the performance of a particular business in an international environment. In practice, however, there may be opportunities to influence accounting information using a variety of methods and techniques, and as a result, the financial statements lose their function and misrepresent the accounting data, resulting in profit manipulation. Profit manipulation is also dealt with by the phenomenon of earnings management, which is a topical topic in the world of finance in the international environment. This is a very complex and multifaceted phenomenon occurring in companies, irrespective of their territory, area of business or size. Several profit models are used to measure and detect earnings management, whose detection capability varies. This paper focuses on the selection of profit models according to individual forms of earnings management and the assessment of variable profit models in the V4 countries.

The influence of tax, tunneling incentive, and bonus mechanisms on transfer pricing decision in manufacturing companies

Transfer pricing is a way conducted by a multinational company to do tax avoidance. Concentrated ownership structure makes the majority shareholders tend to perform a tunneling incentive that could harm minority shareholders. Companies that set bonus mechanism based on the profits will make the management or the board of directors tend to conduct profit manipulation. The aim of this research is to analyze the influence of tax, tunneling incentive and bonus mechanism on transfer pricing decision taken by manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. The sample used on this study is manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2012-2014 totaling 69 companies taken using purposive sampling method. The analysis technique used in this study is analysis binary logistic regression. The result of this study shows that tax and tunneling incentive have significantly influence on transfer pricing, while bonus mechanism does not have significant influence on transfer pricing