This study investigates whether a country's level of financial development is associated with earnings management in an international setting. Financial development is likely to heighten the monitoring and scrutiny of accounting numbers because of strengthened investor protection laws and regulations as well as sophisticated market participants. Therefore, we first hypothesize that both accrual‐based and real earnings management decrease with greater financial development. However, research shows that managers tend to apply real earnings management, instead of accrual‐based earnings management, under strict accounting standards, regulations, and close auditor scrutiny. Thus, we explore the alternative hypothesis that accrual‐based earnings management decreases but real earnings management increases along with higher financial development. We examine the relationship between financial development and both types of earnings management using 56,830 observations in 37 countries covering the period 2009–2012. The results indicate that both types of earnings management are more restrained under higher levels of financial development.

中文翻译：

---

关于金融发展与盈余管理之间关系的跨国研究

这项研究调查了一个国家的金融发展水平是否与国际环境下的盈余管理相关。由于加强了投资者保护法律和法规以及成熟的市场参与者，金融发展可能会加强对会计数字的监控和审查。因此，我们首先假设应计制和实际盈余管理都随着财务的发展而下降。但是，研究表明，在严格的会计标准，规定和密切的审计员监督下，经理倾向于采用实际的收益管理，而不是基于权责发生制的收益管理。因此，我们探索了基于权责发生制的盈余管理减少而实际盈余管理随着财务发展的增长而增加的另一种假设。我们使用在37个国家（涵盖2009-2012年）的56,830项观察资料，研究了金融发展与两种类型的收益管理之间的关系。结果表明，在较高的金融发展水平下，两种类型的盈余管理都受到更大的约束。