Abstract

The study investigates whether and how gender diversity in ownership structure (here intended as female ownership) is related to private (unlisted) Italian companies’ propensity to engage in earnings management practices, specifically in “earnings minimization” (EM) and “earnings change minimization” (ECM). Companies practice EM when they manage earnings to bring them close to zero. They practice ECM, instead, when they manage earnings to avoid large earnings changes or, in other words, to “smooth” company earnings. Companies that engage in such practices are detected by adopting the earnings distribution approach. The results of chi-square tests for equality of distributions show that the earnings frequency distributions and the earnings change frequency distributions, conditional on the portion of equity held by female owners, are significantly equal from a statistical point of view, demonstrating that gender diversity in ownership structure and private Italian companies’ propensity to engage in EM and ECM are not related. Logit analysis models confirm these findings. The main contribution this study brings to the literature consists in the fact that it is the first study that investigates the relationship between gender diversity in ownership structure and earnings management practices.

Key words: Earnings management, earnings minimization, earnings change minimization, gender diversity, private companies, Italy.