Voluntary Disclosure of Financial and Capital Market Data and Earnings Management: Empirical Evidence from Uganda

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of voluntary disclosure of financial and capital market data on earnings management among listed firms at the Uganda Securities Exchange. The paper is premised on the idea that the provision of voluntary disclosure of financial and capital market data contributes to the reduction of information asymmetry and that lower information asymmetry makes it more difficult for managers to engage in earnings management practices. We proxy earnings management following the modified Jones model (Dechow, Sloan, & Sweeney, 1995) and use annual reports of 9 listed non-financial firms at the Uganda Securities Exchange for the period 2012 to 2017. Applying robust regression analysis, we find that voluntary disclosure of financial and capital market data is positively and insignificantly related to earnings management. This suggests that the disclosure of financial and capital market data in the annual reports of listed firms at the Uganda Securities Exchange doesn’t necessarily reduce the incentives for managers to engage in earnings management through discretionary accruals.