Purpose Earnings management (EM) plays a vital role in risk management. This paper aims to investigate the impact of real earning management (REM) on credit risk. Design/methodology/approach This paper measures the credit risk by the expected default frequency of Kealhofer, McQuown and Vasicek model. This paper uses data from 2011 to 2020 of Pakistani manufacturing listed firms. This paper applies the fixed effect to analyze the results and generalized methods of moments to handle the heterogeneity issue. Findings This paper finds that the impact of REM on corporate credit risk is positive and significant and that of sales manipulation is negative and significant. This paper also reports similar outcomes of the robustness test using dynamic panel regression. Originality/value The findings of this study may help managers to modify the EM strategy to minimize corporate credit risk. Furthermore, the findings of this study are important for investors to enhance their understanding of firms’ accounting information, REM activities and cash flow patterns. It further suggests the manager should consider credit risk as an important factor while practicing REM.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of policy uncertainty on firm performance and to examine how the different cultural societies deal with the policy-induced uncertainty.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use data of European non-financial firms to extend the growing literature on policy uncertainty, firm performance and national culture. The authors consider financial as well as market proxies to measure firm performance and use Hofstede's cultural dimensions as a proxy for national culture. The authors apply the generalized method of moments (GMM-system) regression technique on a dataset of 702 non-financial European firms, listed during the period 2002–2018.FindingsThe authors find overwhelming evidence that policy uncertainty reduces the performance of the European firms; however, cultural differences among different European countries moderate the impact of policy uncertainty on the financial as well as the market performance of the firms. The results of this study show that European cultures with high power distance, individualism, masculinity and indulgence efficiently deal with the economic policy uncertainty. While the European societies with high uncertainty avoidance fail to cope with policy-induced uncertainty. The results are robust to different regression models, alternate proxies of firm performance and endogeneity issues.Practical implicationsThe authors argue that policy uncertainty increases information asymmetry and decreases firm performance, therefore, the policymakers shall be considerate of the consequences of the policy-induced uncertainty in the society and business arena that would not only adversely affect the firms but also the economy.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the role of national culture on the relationship between policy uncertainty and firm performance in the European context.

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