Abstract
This paper introduces the PSCORE, which aggregates nine personal characteristics of chief executive officers (CEOs), to signal the quality of earnings. The PSCORE is a composite score based on publicly available data on CEOs. The study reports strong positive relationships between the PSCORE and two different proxies for earnings quality, (1) discretionary accruals and (2) financial statement errors, measured by deviations of the first digits of figures reported in financial statements from those expected by Benford’s Law. Further analyses indicate that the relationships between the PSCORE and the proxies for earnings quality become more pronounced when CEOs have high equity-based compensation incentives. The findings have some implications for practitioners.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-39 |
Journal | Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting |
Volume | n/a |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 11 Aug 2020 |
Bibliographical note
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11156-020-00916-7Keywords
- Earnings quality
- Benford's Law
- Chief Executive Officers
- Benford’s law
- Chief executive officers