Audit Committee Interlocks and the Contagion of Accrual-Based and Real Earnings Management

Cohen et al. (2008) document that firms switched from accrual-based earnings management (AEM) to real earnings management (REM) within three years after passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002. A remaining question is how so many firms could have made the transition from one accounting practice to another in such a short period of time. We investigate a hidden mechanism underlying this large-scale, accelerated transfer of accounting knowledge. Our study reveals that audit committee interlocks facilitated firms’ post-SOX substitution from AEM to REM, contributed to the contagion of AEM before SOX and to the contagion of REM after SOX. Our results are robust for subsamples of intangible-intensive firms and manufacturing firms, which are more susceptible to REM. We further create a REM-AEM substitution index and find that the contagion of substitution from AEM to REM was disseminated through audit committee interlocks. Overall, we identify audit committee interlocks as a significant channel for transmitting accounting information between firms.