ACCOUNTING REFORMS AND ACCOUNTING QUALITY: EVIDENCE FROM ALGERIA

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By: KIMOUCHE BILAL
JEL: M41, M48
Keywords: Accounting change, Accounting quality, Accounting earnings management, Real earnings management, Accounting conservatism

This paper aims to explore the impact of the 2010 accounting change in Algeria on accounting quality. The study included 20 non-financial companies during the period 2005-2009 before and the period 2011-2016 after the accounting change. The first sub-period included 81 firm-year observations, while the second included 94 firm-year observations. Accounting quality was measured by the three known proxies: accounting earnings management as the discretionary accruals (Dechow et al., 1995), real earnings management as the abnormal cash flows from operations (Dechow et al., 1998; Roychowdhury, 2006), and accounting conservatism (Ball and Shivakumar, 2005). According to the results, accounting change impacted accounting quality in the Algerian companies, with inconsistency regarding the improvement of accounting quality between different measures, where the results recorded an insignificant decrease in accounting earnings management, significant decreases in both real earnings management and accounting conservatism.