Parallels and Differences in Earnings Management of the Visegrad Four and the Baltics

Abstract

Earnings management is a legal and widely preferred phenomenon of business finance that financial managers use to maintain and improve the enterprise’s competitiveness. Managers purposely manipulate business earnings to achieve the required status of the enterprise. The consequence of these activities is to provide a positive perspective for the owners, encourage the profitability for the creditor and the investors as well as demonstrate economic strengths to competitors. This article aims to identify parallels and differences in earnings management of enterprises in the Visegrad Four and the Baltics in terms of competitiveness for the nineyear period 2010-2018. The research uses a final sample of 4,543 observations from the EBITs of Slovak, Czech, Hungarian and Polish enterprises as well as 1,633 observations from the EBITs of Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian enterprises. Time-series methods with all necessary assumptions have been run for the analyzed financial dataset. The results of the econometric modeling of unit roots show significant parallels in these groups of countries. The enterprises from the Visegrad group and the Baltics group use the apparatus of earnings management to be competitive. The obtained results confirm the systematic but legal manipulation from the side of management. A quantitative analysis of homogeneity tests using 1,000,000 Monte Carlo simulations indicates significant time differences of manipulation in these emerging countries. The year 2014 signaled a radical “accelerando” in earnings management for the V4, and the year 2016 is highlighted for the Baltics.