An analysis of accrual-based earnings management in large Serbian companies

This study analyzes systematic differences in earnings management across 215 large companies operating in the real sector in the Republic of Serbia in the period from 2009 to 2017. To achieve the main goal of the study, we constructed an aggregate measure which covers several aspects of accrual-based earnings management. The results indicate that the accrual-based earnings management, which is immanent to economies with underdeveloped capital markets, weak investor protection and frequent changes in the regulatory framework coupled with inefficient judiciary, is widespread among large Serbian companies. Having found significant differences in the levels of earnings management across companies, we examined the mean values of the aggregate earnings management measure for numerous categorical variables in order to identify whether individual company characteristics are related to incentives for aggressive exploitation of accounting discretion.