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  • November 2023
  • Article
  • Accounting Review

When Executives Pledge Integrity: The Effect of the Accountant's Oath on Firms' Financial Reporting

By: Jonas Heese, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Caspar David Peter
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:28
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Abstract

We study the effect of executives’ pledges of integrity on firms’ financial reporting outcomes by exploiting a 2016 regulation that requires holders of Dutch professional accounting degrees to pledge an integrity oath. We identify chief executive officers (CEOs) and chief financial officers (CFOs) required to take the integrity oath, and find that firms reduce income-increasing discretionary accruals after executives took the oath. These firms also reduce discretionary expenditures, indicating that oath-taking executives reduce overall earnings management and not merely substitute accruals-based with real-activities earnings management. These effects are concentrated in firms where the CFO took the oath. Overall, our results indicate that integrity oaths for executives improve firms’ financial reporting quality.

Keywords

Integrity; Financial Reporting; Accounting; Earnings Management

Citation

Heese, Jonas, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos, and Caspar David Peter. "When Executives Pledge Integrity: The Effect of the Accountant's Oath on Firms' Financial Reporting." Accounting Review 98, no. 7 (November 2023): 261–288.
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About The Author

Jonas Heese

Accounting and Management
→More Publications

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  • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System Implementations and Corporate Misconduct By: Jonas Heese and Joseph Pacelli
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  • Non-Financial Violations By: Jonas Heese
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