The Impact of Financial Crisis on Earnings Management in Nonfinancial Listed Firms: Evidence from Jordan

Abstract

This paper studies earnings management in Jordan during the global financial crisis. It addresses mainly the question of whether or not financial crisis has an impact on discretionary accruals, using the modified Jones model (1995) for estimating discretionary accruals. By applying Ordinary Least Squares regression model on a sample of 71 nonfinancial listed firms during the period of 2005-2012, I find a conclusive evidence that Jordanian nonfinancial listed firms did not engage in a greater level of earnings management during the financial crisis period. In addition, larger firms are less involved in earnings management practices compared to smaller firms. Moreover, the results suggest a negative significant impact of operating cash flow on discretionary accruals, while it fails to connect current year losses with discretionary accruals. However, the findings indicate that firm’s leverage is positively and significantly associated with discretionary accruals. Overall, the empirical results provided evidence that earnings management practices in Jordanian nonfinancial sectors are relatively small, even smaller in services sector, which raise questions about the validity of the modified Jones model and whether or not different models (such as Deangelo, 1986) should be used in future studies regarding earnings management.