فصلنامه پژوهش های حسابداری مالی
سال شانزدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 59، بهار 1403)

The proper implementation of corporate governance in companies plays a significant role in their management and leadership, protecting the interests of shareholders and preventing opportunistic behavior by managers. Considering this issue and the new corporate governance code in the Iranian capital market, in this research, the impact of the new corporate governance code on accrual-based earnings management and real earnings management is investigated. The statistical sample of the research included 117 companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 2014 to2021. The results of the research based on regression analysis of panel data indicated that the new corporate governance code had a negative and significant impact on earning management based on the manipulation of accruals. Also, the results have shown that the announcement of the corporate governance code had a negative and significant impact on real earning management based on the manipulation of production costs, discretionary costs, and operating cash flows. Therefore, the requirements of the Securities and Exchange Organization regarding corporate governance in the capital market have been able to lead to the protection of investors' rights and the improvement of the quality of financial reporting of companies.

Considering that one of the factors influencing credit ratings is the quality of corporate governance and that credit ratings affect stock liquidity in the capital market by influencing investors' decisions, this study aims to investigate the mediating effect of credit ratings on the relationship between corporate governance quality and stock liquidity over 10 years from 2013 to 2022. In this regard, for the first time in Iran, a composite liquidity index was used to calculate stock liquidity. The data collection method involved document analysis and reference to databases, and the data analysis method was inferential. To test the research hypotheses, a panel data model was used. Emphasizing the reverse structure of the composite liquidity measure, the findings of the study indicated that corporate governance quality has a positive and significant impact on stock liquidity and that credit ratings play a partial mediating role in the relationship between corporate governance quality and stock liquidity.

Information disclosure is considered one of the most important aspects of corporate performance and decision-making. Managers' decisions regarding the extent and manner of information disclosure will have a significant impact on the decision-making of other market players. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of information disclosure by peer companies on managers' decision-making regarding the level of disclosure of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. The moderating role of reliance on external financing is also examined. The research method combines deductive and inductive approaches, and data from 113 companies over 10 years have been studied. The results showed that information disclosure by peer companies has a positive and significant effect on the disclosure of the companies under study. These results indicate that the information published by peers acts as a driver for increased corporate disclosure. Regarding the moderating role of reliance on external financing in the relationship between peer disclosure and corporate disclosure, the results showed that this factor does not have a significant effect on this relationship. Therefore, this feature does not have a significant impact on the effect of peers on corporate disclosure.

The phenomenon of dividend stickiness has recently attracted significant attention from researchers. However, limited domestic studies are addressing this issue. This study aims to better understand the various aspects of this phenomenon by examining the relationship between managers' overconfidence and dividend stickiness, as well as the effect of firms' catering incentives on this relationship. Utilizing data from 143 firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange between 2012 and 2023 (1,716 observations), this research employs a Logit regression approach with the maximum likelihood estimator, controlling for fixed effects of years and industries. The findings confirm the existence of dividend stickiness and reveal a positive and significant relationship between managers' overconfidence and dividend stickiness. Furthermore, the results indicate that an increase in firms' catering incentives weakens this relationship. Robustness tests, which include controls for macroeconomic variables and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic using the ordered logit model and an alternative measure for the moderating variable, support the main findings and align with the concepts proposed in the Catering theory.

Expenses classification shifting significantly compromises the quality of core earnings, resulting in misleading information about firms’ core and sustainable performance. Classification shifting can be direct and unintentional consequence of overconfident CEOs’ cognitive bias. Also, overconfident CEOs might consciously and intentionally misclassify recurring expenses as nonrecurring items to inflate core earning. However, if the firms’ financial statements are more comparable to those of their industry peers. Stronger monitoring leads to fewer opportunities to manage earnings. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the impact of managerial overconfidence on expenses classification shifting based on the role of moderating of the comparability of financial statements. The sample consists 130 companies in the period 2015-2022. The results showed that managers' overconfidence leads to an increase expenses classification shifting and a piecemeal decrease classification shifting over time. In addition, the comparability of financial statements acts as an obstacle for managers' overconfidence in expenses classification shifting and piecemeal reducing them over time. Therefore, the market participants should pay serious attention to the overconfident CEOs’ and the compararability of financial statements in order to expenses classification shifting.