Past, present, and future of earnings management research

Figures & data

Table 1. Basic differences between accruals-based earnings management and real earnings management.

	Accruals-based earnings management	Real earnings management
Implementation via	Accounting principles	Operational decisions
Exploitation	Financial statements	Operational decisions relating to operating, investing, and financing activities
Direct/indirect impact on cash flow	Indirect	Direct

Source: Strakova (2020).

Figure 1. Processing of document eligibility based on the PRISMA guideline. Source: Created by the author from https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IA9LP1.

Figure 2. Number of publications related to earnings management during 1993–2021. Source: Created by the author.

Table 2. Key authors by citations and numbers of publications.

Authors	No. of Documents	No. of Citations	Avg. Citations
Kim J.-B	8	1056	132.0
Cheng Q.	5	874	174.8
Lobo G. J.	5	554	110.8
Zhang H.	9	529	58.8
Wang Y.	8	412	51.5
Prencipe A.	6	410	68.3
Liu Q.	5	383	76.6
Leung S.	5	370	74.0
Kim Y.	10	365	36.5
Jiraporn P.	8	316	39.5

Source: Extracted from VOSViewer.

Table 3. Most influential papers by citations.

Authors	Title	Year	Source Title	Cited by
Leuz C., Nanda D., Wysocki P.D.	Earnings management and investor protection: An international comparison	2003	Journal of Financial Economics	2462
Klein A.	Audit committee, board of director characteristics, and earnings management	2002	Journal of Accounting and Economics	2130
Roychowdhury S.	Earnings management through real activities manipulation	2006	Journal of Accounting and Economics	1813
Burgstahler D., Dichev I.	Earnings management to avoid earnings decreases and losses	1997	Journal of Accounting and Economics	1680
Becker C. L., Defond M. L., Jiambalvo J., Subramanyam K.R.	The effect of audit quality on earnings management	1998	Contemporary Accounting Research	1573
Cohen D.A., Dey A., Lys T.Z.	Real and accrual-based earnings management in the pre- and post-sarbanes-oxley periods	2008	Accounting Review	1277
Xie B., Davidson III W.N., Dadalt P. J.	Earnings management and corporate governance: The role of the board and the audit committee	2003	Journal of Corporate Finance	1247
Degeorge F., Patel J., Zeckhauser R.	Earnings management to exceed thresholds	1999	Journal of Business	1156
Teoh S. H., Welch I., Wong T.J.	Earnings management and the long-run market performance of initial public offerings	1998	Journal of Finance	1088
Teoh S. H., Welch I., Wong T. J.	Earnings management and the underperformance of seasoned equity offerings	1998	Journal of Financial Economics	977

Source: Extracted from VOSViewer with data from https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IA9LP1.

Table 4. Leading countries by documents and citations.

Country	No. of Documents	No. of Citations	Avg. Citations
United States	582	41,123	70.7
China	180	3339	18.6
United Kingdom	124	2673	21.6
Australia	123	2945	23.9
Taiwan	115	2269	19.7
Malaysia	114	2018	17.7
Indonesia	111	720	6.5
South Korea	104	1531	14.7
Canada	88	3630	41.3
Spain	67	2203	32.9
India	66	351	5.3
Hong Kong	65	7036	108.2
Tunisia	65	1456	22.4
Jordan	50	546	10.9
Iran	43	128	3.0
Italy	38	1624	42.7
Vietnam	38	190	5.0
France	37	1171	31.6
Brazil	33	373	11.3
Greece	32	969	30.3

Source: Extracted from VOSViewer.

Table 5. The top 10 contributing institutions by citations.

Organization	No. of Documents	No. of Citations	Avg. Citations
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong	4	1277	319.3
University of Notre Dame, United States	4	454	113.5
University of Houston, United States	5	448	89.6
Stanford University, United States	3	423	141.0
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong	4	413	103.3
University of California, Irvine, United States	5	405	81.0
University of Iowa, United States	5	382	76.4
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong	4	343	85.8
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong	3	331	110.3
School of Accounting and Finance, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong	3	309	103.0

Source: Extracted from VOSViewer.

Figure 3. Science mapping of documents related to earnings management based on bibliographic coupling analysis between 1993 and 2021.Source: Extracted from VOSViewer with data from https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IA9LP1.

Figure 4. Keyword co-occurrence network map of various keywords. Source: Extracted from VOSViewer.

Strakova, L. (2020). Earnings management in global background. In SHS Web of Conferences (Vol. 74, p. 01032). EDP Sciences.

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Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IA9LP1, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:BDdjklqAgU6RPseEN + 6/DA== [fileUNF].