Earnings management and quarterly discretionary accruals level in the Brazilian stock market

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the behavior of the quarterly earnings management level of Brazilian public companies. For this purpose, a sample of 107 companies listed on the B3 Brasil Bolsa Balcão S.A. was selected and the quarterly discretionary accruals among 2012 and 2017 were estimated using Paulo’s (2007) model as a proxy for earnings management. Next, a second regression with the quarterly discretionary accruals and dummy variables representative of each quarter was used. The results indicate that the magnitude average of discretionary accruals are higher in the fourth and last quarter, and discretionary accruals for the first quarter were significantly different from the second and third quarter. These findings suggest that managers adjust the firm’s performance report more strongly at the end of the year as it becomes the last opportunity to use discretion over accounting numbers with the intent to achieve annual goals.