CORPORATE DEBT AND EARNINGS MANAGEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM SLOVAKIA

Several different models have been developed worldwide to detect manipulative financial reporting in en-terprises. These earnings management practices help enterprises improve their financial performance or gain some advantages based on window dressing techniques. Moreover, there are several firm-specific factors and indicators that can influence the earnings management behavior of enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between corporate debt and earnings management in a sample of 15,716 Slovak firms over a 5-year period. The level of earnings management is measured by discretionary accruals using the Kasznik model, the debt of enterprises is quan-tified by several indicators (total indebtedness ratio, self-financing ratio, current and non-current indebtedness ratios, equity leverage ratio, and insolvency ratio). In this paper, a correlation analysis and an ANOVA method were applied to show if there is any statistically significant dependence between the level of discretionary accruals and corporate debt. The results indicate a positive relationship between the level of discretionary accruals and total indebtedness, non-current indebtedness, and insolvency ratios, while a negative relationship was revealed for self-financing and cur-rent indebtedness ratios.