Monitoring through Short-Term Debts And Accrual-Based Earnings Management

Earnings Management is a deliberate manipulation of financial reporting in order to achieve an expected level of earnings. So, earnings may increase, decrease or smooth based on various management's goals and objectives to mislead the stakeholders. It seems that the short-term debt structure can have regulatory benefits because it leads to greater monitoring by creditors and, as a result, reduces the earnings management. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of monitoring through short-term debts on accrual-based earnings management. The sample consists of 136 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period from 2010 to 2015. The discretionary accruals criterion calculated using Simon and Fang model (2014), is applied to measure accruals-based earnings management. The research method is the correlation method and data analysis method is the multivariate regression model. Results indicate that there is a significant relation between short-term bank debts and accruals-based earnings management in low-rated firms. Also, Findings show that there is no significant relation between short-term bank debts and accruals-based earnings management in high-risk firms.