The Association between Management Earnings Forecast and Earnings Management

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between investor perception management through reporting aggressive management earnings forecasts and earnings management through real activities or by manipulating accruals. For this purpose، A sample of 85 firms selected from listed firms in TSE as sample of research، and elicited their data over 1384 – 1389. Modified Jones model was used to estimate the discretionary accruals. Real earnings management is calculated by accelerating sales، increasing production، and reducing discretionary expenses. To test the hypothesis، a t-test and a regression analysis was implemented and statistical analysis done by SPSS17. The aggressiveness of earnings forecasts reporting was measured by the difference between GAAP earnings and management earnings forecasts. The paper finds that manager''s report more aggressively calculated earnings Forecast numbers if they do not meet their earnings targets or they have limited abilities to manage earnings. Also it was found that the gap between the value relevance of GAAP earnings and management earnings forecasts is not smaller for firms with relatively low level of discretionary accruals or real earnings management.