Survey of comparing the effect of ownership type ( public and private ) on the earnings quality of firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of ownership type (public and private) on the earnings quality of firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange.two-dimensional variable of ownership type (public and private) is the independent and the two-dimensional variable of earnings quality (volatility of earnings & discretionary accruals in the modified Jones model) is the dependent variable.The research sample consisted of 540 year - company during the period 2003 to 2012 . The main hypothesis of this research is based on the relationship between ownership type and earnings quality.  multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is used to examine the main hypothesis & to test multiple regression models of sub-hypotheses, ordinary least squares (OLS) and Generalized least squares (GLS) are fitted to the panel data. The results reveal that there is a statistically significant relationship between the ownership type and earnings quality at the 95 percent confidence level , Private companies have higher earnings quality than firms owned and controlled by the state.