The Effect of Earnings Management on the Relationship Between Earnings Forecast Error and Accounting Conservatism

Earning as the most important product of the accounting information system should be of an acceptable quality. Because earning is the basis of the economic decision-making of investors. Investors tend to have information about the future, including the prediction of earnings per share and its precautionary prediction. However, managers' opportunistic behavior by manipulating earnings reduces the reliance on information and reduces the quality of earning. In contrast to accounting conservatism, the manager's biased behavior in identifying earnings is delayed. Hence, the conservatism makes the manager and other groups, such as shareholders, receive less sums of return. This will increase the value of the company. The increased value of the company increases among all the parties in the company's division of the division and welfare of each group. Hence, this research examines the effect of earnings management on the relationship between earnings forecast error and accounting conservatism in a period of 9 years from the over a of 2009 to 2017 in 115 companies from listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange. The results of the research show that there is a significant (positive) relation between the predictive error of earning and the accounting conservatism (as one of the criteria of the quality of earnings) in the real earnings management. But the results of this research do not confirm the significant relationship between the predictive error of earnings and accounting conservatism in accruing earnings management.