Earnings Quality and Identification of Fraudulent Financial Reporting

Fraud is one of the most important issues in financial statements accounting and auditing. The main purpose of the research is to identify the factors influencing the probability of fraud occurrence in financial statements reporting. This study considers earnings quality as a factor effective on identifying a fraud risk and measures it using three indexes of conservatism, earnings smoothing and accruals quality. The probability of fraudulent reporting is measured using the Benish (1999) model. This study examines financial information of 174 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period from 2010 to 2015, that is 1044 observations. The research data are analyzed by panel data technique with fixed effects and its hypothesis test is through the multiple regression model. Findings indicate that conservatism has a significant and negative effect on the fraud probability and arbitrary accruals have significant positive effect on the fraud probability. Finally, the research findings could not approve a significant relationship between earning smoothing and fraud probability in financial reporting.