Ποιότητα λογιστικής πληροφόρησης και εταιρική διακυβέρνηση
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Abstract
This paper aims at examining the effect of corporate governance on earnings management. Scientific research has shown that good corporate governance can reduce the latter practice, and in order to examine this relationship, data from listed, EU-based, IFRS-compliant companies were used, drawn from DataStream concerning the period 2005-2018. To assess the earnings management, the models used were Jones (1991) and Modified Jones (1995) - both assessing discretionary accruals - as well as Dechow & Dichev (2002) - assessing the quality of working capital accruals, which act as proxies for earnings management and information risk respectively. Using corporate governance proxies and control variables for each company’s special features, as well as earnings management proxies as a dependent variable, it was found that gender policies, management board size and audit committee independence affect earnings management negatively, whereas the CEO duality positively. Finally, the direction of earnings management – i.e. upward or downward - seems to have negligible influence on the effect.