Phil Quinn is Assistant Professor of Accounting at the University of Washington. This post is based on an article by Mr. Quinn.
In my paper, Managerial Ownership and Earnings Management: Evidence from Stock Ownership Plans, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, I exploit the initiation of ownership requirements to examine the relation between managerial ownership and earnings management. Prior work provides mixed evidence on the relation between managerial ownership and earnings management. Many studies provide evidence of a positive relation between managerial ownership and earnings management, which is consistent with an increase in stock price increasing the portfolio value of high-ownership managers more than the value of low-ownership managers (i.e., the “reward effect”) (Cheng and Warfield 2005; Bergstresser and Philippon 2006; Baber, Kang, Liang, and Zhu 2009; Johnson, Ryan, and Tian 2009). Other work notes that earnings management is a risky activity and posits that risk-adverse managers will be less likely to engage in risky activities as their ownership increases. Consistent with the “risk effect” increasing with managerial ownership, several studies find no relation or a negative relation between earnings management and managerial ownership (Erickson, Hanlon, and Maydew 2006; Hribar and Nichols 2007; Armstrong, Jagolinzer, and Larcker 2010). Armstrong, Larcker, Ormazabal, and Taylor (2013) note that the theoretical reward effect and risk effect are countervailing forces, and the countervailing forces may explain why prior empirical work finds mixed evidence on the relation between ownership and earnings management. By examining stock ownership plans, a governance reform that limits the reward effect, I seek to inform the discussion on the relation between ownership and earnings management.