Earnings Management during a financial crisis: The effect of the current financial crisis on earnings management in the European Union

It is expected that, during a financial crisis, earnings management increases because it is more difficult to meet targets. Focus lies on the period post-IFRS because the implementation of IFRS is argued to lower earnings management. I would like to find out whether this argued advantage of IFRS still holds in a situation of financial crisis. Is there, after the implementation of IFRS, still more earnings management during a financial crisis or does IFRS lower earnings management even in difficult times? To examine this, I follow the method of Burgstahler and Dichev (1997). I use histograms to look at the earnings distributions and I use a standardized differences test to test for significance. I also compare the effect of the crisis on countries with different law systems. I look at France as a code law country and the United Kingdom as a common law country. The findings show that in some situations the argued advantage does hold and in others it does not hold.