Does Earnings Management Amplify The Association Between Corporate Governance And Firm Performance?: Evidence From Korea

This paper aims to examine whether earnings management strengthens the causal links between corporate governance and firm performance. It examines the association between corporate governance and real activity-based earnings management and extends it to firm performance. This study involves 1,104 listings on the Korean Stock Exchange and finds that real activity-based earnings management decreases if firms have a well-established governance system, and such earnings management could strengthen the causal link between corporate governance and firm performance as measured by Tobin’s Q. Our study results are the first empirical evidences that real activity-based earnings management is effectively controlled by a corporate governance system and that it has links between corporate governance and performance. This provides the importance of corporate governance which could effectively constrain real activity-based earnings management, such that eventually influences the firm’s performance. In particular, it provides useful insights into corporate structures in which ownership is highly concentrated. Our findings are of great importance for Korea, in which the predominant business structure for large enterprises is that of the chaebol (equivalent to the Japanese keiretsu), which consists of conglomerates of many smaller companies and in which the structure of corporate governance is that of owner control.