Analysis of the Effects of Government Policies, Corporations' Magnitude and Profitability Level on Real, Accrual and Holistic Earnings Management

Abstract

This study critically analyses the nexus between political regimes/government policies, corporations’ magnitude and profitability level and accrual, real or holistic earnings management among corporations in Nigeria. With this objective, a sample of 1173 observations was collected from 51 corporations for 23 years from 1999 to 2021. Adopting the ex-post-facto design, three hypotheses formed three models analysed with the manova and mvreg. The result showed that political regimes/government policies are evidently statistically significant and determine the extent to which corporations engage in either accrual, real or holistic earnings management. It further showed that corporation magnitude (corpmagt) influence is negative and statistically significant across all the dependent variables; accrual earnings management (accrmgt), real earnings management (realmgt) and holistic earnings management (hoengmgt) while corporation profitability level (cproflev) is positive to accrmgt and negative to both realmgt and hoengmgt. In line with the aforementioned result, it was recommended, amongst others, that CEOs and shareholders of corporations should tighten their supervisory roles by carefully scrutinising all management actions with respect to their reporting policies, choice of accounting treatment and full disclosure.