Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of corporate governance on the impact of earnings management on dividend policy.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors selected French non-financial companies listed on the CAC All Tradable index during the 2008–2015 period. Feasible generalized least square regression method is used to estimate the econometric models.

Findings

The empirical results allowed the authors to confirm and/or reject certain hypotheses. First, the ownership concentration seems to positively moderate the impact of earnings management on dividend policy. Another conclusion that the authors have been able to draw is that the effect of earnings management on dividend policy is more favorable in the case of firms with a small director’s board.

Practical implications

Our results have shown that French firms run earnings to inform the market that they can distribute dividends. Therefore, we recommend that the various partners of the firm pay more attention to the governance mechanisms of these types of companies and, in particular, in countries where foreign investors suffer from weak legal protection (Easterbrook, 1984; Gomes, 2000; La Porta et al., 2000 and Athari et al., 2016). In fact, standardization bodies, the Ministry of Finance, external auditors and stock exchange organizer must focus on sophisticated governance mechanisms to ensure better quality of financial reporting.

Originality/value

To our knowledge, no other research has examined whether the impact of earnings management on dividend policy varies significantly with the moderating effect of certain governance mechanisms in France.

中文翻译：

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法国背景下的股息政策、盈余管理和公司治理的调节作用

目的

本文的目的是检验公司治理对盈余管理对股利政策影响的调节作用。

设计/方法/方法

在本文中，作者选择了 2008-2015 年期间在 CAC All Tradable 指数中上市的法国非金融公司。采用可行的广义最小二乘回归方法对计量经济模型进行估计。

发现

实证结果使作者能够确认和/或拒绝某些假设。首先，股权集中度似乎正缓和了盈余管理对股息政策的影响。作者能够得出的另一个结论是，对于董事会规模较小的公司，盈余管理对股息政策的影响更为有利。

实际影响

我们的结果表明，法国公司通过盈利来告知市场他们可以分配股息。因此，我们建议公司的各个合伙人更多地关注这类公司的治理机制，特别是在外国投资者受到法律保护薄弱的国家（Easterbrook，1984；Gomes，2000；La Porta等）。等人，2000 年和 Athari等人，2016 年）。事实上，标准化机构、财政部、外部审计师和证券交易所组织者必须专注于完善的治理机制，以确保更好的财务报告质量。

原创性/价值

据我们所知，没有其他研究检查过盈余管理对股息政策的影响是否会随着法国某些治理机制的调节作用而显着变化。