PurposeThis study examines how lenders modify their behavior and their use of traditional, transaction-based lending models in credit decisions when faced with low earnings quality.Design/methodology/approachTo measure the earnings quality, following Bharath, Sunder and Sunder (2008), the authors use three measures of accrual quality and combine them into a simple parsimonious measure of accrual quality. Subsequently, the authors apply the incremental R-square approach used by Kim and Kross (2005) to determine the degree to which lenders modify their reliance on financial statement ratios when faced with low accrual quality.FindingsConsistent with prior literature, this study shows that the cost of debt is higher when accrual quality is low. In addition, this study extends prior literature by showing that lenders decrease their reliance on income statement data to make credit decisions as accrual quality decreases.Originality/valueThis paper broadens existing literature on the pricing of information risk in capital markets by being the first to show that lenders modify their reliance on financial statement data when faced with low-quality accruals. In addition, this paper extends the findings of Billings and Morton (2002) and demonstrates to managers the futility of using accrual manipulations to obtain more favorable credit terms. Lastly, this paper aids regulators and standard setters who seek to improve the usefulness of financial statements by showing that creditors do not appear to be misled by reporting choices that lower the quality of accruals.

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This paper investigates the degree of discretionary current accruals (DCA -1 ) prior to the initial public offerings (IPOs) of foreign firms in an attempt to study the two seemingly opposing views of Teoh, Welch, and Wong (1998) and Ball and Shivakumar (2008) in regards to pre-IPO earnings management. By analyzing a sample of 4962 IPOs from 28 countries, I find that, on average, IPO firms do not report significantly positive DCA -1 . This result supports the view held by Ball and Shivakumar that IPO firms do not engage in earnings management and it is inconsistent with the earnings management hypothesis of Teoh et al. (1998). Furthermore, results support the criticism of Ball and Shivakumar (2008) that the use of discretionary accruals in the IPO year (DCA 0 ) is a biased measure of earnings management. However, consistent with the hypothesis of Teoh et al. (1998), results show that firms with higher discretionary accruals (DCA -1 or DCA 0 ) underperform in the long run. The negative relationship between the long-term performance and the level of DCA is robust to several measures of long-term performance (cumulative abnormal returns-CAR, buy-and-hold abnormal returns-BHAR, Fama-French 4-factor model-Alpha), to several time horizons (3 and 5 years), and holds even after controlling for several firm characteristics. Overall, the results show that although on average IPO firms don't engage in earnings management, the ones that do, underperform in the long run.

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