International Evidence on Analyst Monitoring and Earnings Management: The Roles of Corporate Disclosure and National Culture
Abstract
We examine country-level determinants of private information search incentives, and whether analysts’ role in constraining managers’ opportunistic earnings management varies across countries. In a sample of 31,312 firm-year observations originating from 30 countries, we document that: (1) analyst coverage is negatively (positively) related to the level of corporate disclosure (how secretive the national culture is); (2) the negative association between analyst coverage and earnings management is observed in stronger investor protection countries but not in weaker investor protection countries; and (3) analyst monitoring fails to mitigate culturedriven earnings manipulations in countries with more individualistic and uncertainty-tolerant cultures. Taken together, financial analysts’ role in constraining opportunistic earnings management across countries appears to vary with corporate disclosure and cultural environments.