ABSTRACT
Earnings management behavior has been existed in companies for a long time as a worldwide phenomenon. As Jackson once put that Earnings management is the manipulation of accounting numbers within the scope of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) (Jackson and Pitman, 2001). According to Katherine Schipper, 1989, earnings management is the act of intentionally influencing the process of financial reporting to obtain some private gain. And Healy and Wahlen, 1999 says that earnings management involves the alteration of financial reports to mislead stakeholders about the organization’s underlying performance, or to influence contractual outcomes that depend on reported accounting numbers.
