Board of directors and board of statutory auditors’ diversity and earnings management: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

The importance of diversity within corporate boards has been demonstrated both from the literature and also from the national and international regulation. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of diversity on the Board of Directors and in the Board of Statutory Auditor on Earnings Management behaviour. Starting with a random sample of 121 non-financial Italian listed companies, we hand-collected corporate governance data from the corporate governance report to investigate how firms deal with the opportunistic behaviour of EM, through the appointment of members with specific features. Our findings show that, even though diversity within the Board of Directors is not associated with Earnings Management, the presence of female and member expertise on Board of Statutory Auditor instead curb Earnings Management. Based on these findings we argue that pursuing a good degree of diversity in the corporate boards could help to improve the earnings quality and, in particular, to reduce Earnings Management behaviour.