Corporate Governance and Accounting Earnings Management: The Case of Tunisia

Abstract

This paper aims to test the impact of some corporate governance characteristics on the management of the accounting earnings measured by discretionary accruals. As for the prior research we treat the level of management of accounting earnings as a "proxy" for the quality of the accounting and financial information published by companies. Empirical analysis is based on the modified Jones model (1995) to estimate discretionary accruals and a panel data model applied to a sample of 21 companies listed on the Tunis Stock Exchange (BVMT) over a period of 3 years from 2008 to 2010. The main findings of the current study reveal that, in the Tunisian context, the affiliation of auditors to a "Big" international network and the independence of the board of directors significantly constrain the practice of managing the accounting earnings and, consequently, they improve the quality of the published result. However, the number of independent members in the audit committee has a negative but not significant impact on the practice of earnings management, whereas the duration of the audit mandate does not affect this practice.

Finally, the control variables taken into account in our study have a significant effect on the quality of the accounting result.

Thus, the results of this study helped to improve our understanding of earnings management in Tunisian companies, with reference to some characteristics of corporate governance.