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Earnings management opportunity for U.S. oil and gas firms at 2011 Arab spring

Fri, March 15, 10:30am to 12:00pm, Meeting Hotel, TBA

Abstract

Prior studies found that oil and gas firms taking advantage of gaining large profits during the crude price fluctuation period and demonstrated an income-decreasing earnings management to lower reporting numbers for political costs reduction (Byard et al., 2007; Han and Wang, 1998). By examining U.S. oil and gas companies’ earnings manipulation behavior during the Arab spring in 2011, our study found that prior argument was partially supported with another pattern. The oil and gas firms may overall engage in reducing their reported quarterly earnings. However, large petroleum refining firms may not incur quarterly earnings-reducing activity with a higher reputation cost posting when their huge profits were much criticized, whereas smaller crude oil and natural gas firms were found to manage earnings downward as a result that these firms were affected less in public censure with a similar circumstance. Furthermore, our results were consistent with the measures of total accruals, current accruals and non-current accruals. Therefore, this study provides additional empirical evidence supporting in earnings management literature regarding political cost hypothesis and further contributes to a better understanding of earnings management among the oil and gas industry.

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