This study evaluates the effect of earnings management on earnings quality and sustainability in the GCC region, particularly in distressed and non-distressed companies. Studies on earnings quality and sustainability have mostly concentrated on developed markets, with little attention paid to emerging markets like the GCC region. This research is the first to examine how manipulating earnings impacts the quality and sustainability of earnings in distressed and non-distressed companies. This study utilized a unique dataset that represents the GCC region, which has a specific socio-cultural context. We collected data from 839 publicly listed companies in the GCC region between 2011 and 2022 using DataStream^®, WorldScope (WS), and Refinitiv Eikon. To test our hypotheses and ensure accuracy, we used three types of regressions (the fixed effects model, OLS, and 2SLS) and conducted robustness and endogeneity tests. The results of this study indicate that accruals-based earnings management has a negative impact on earnings quality for distressed and non-distressed firms but a positive effect on earnings sustainability for both types of companies. The results of this study also find variations in earnings management practices across industries. These findings provide valuable guidance for auditors, investors, and other stakeholders to evaluate the earnings quality and sustainability of distressed and non-distressed companies, benefiting the GCC economy and similar economies.

Purpose: In this study, the authors examine the relationships between market-based regulations and corporate carbon disclosure and carbon performance. The authors also investigate whether these relationships vary across emission-intensive and non-emission intensive industries.Design/methodology/approach: The study sample consists of the world's 500 largest companies across most major industries over a recent five-year period. Country-specific random effect multiple regression analysis is used to test empirical models that predict relationships between market-based regulations and carbon disclosure and carbon performance.Findings: Results indicate that market-based regulations significantly and positively affect corporate carbon performance. However, market-based regulations do not significantly affect corporate carbon disclosure. This study also finds that the association between regulatory pressures and carbon disclosure and carbon performance varies across emission-intensive and non-emission-intensive industries.Research limitations/implications: The findings of this study have key implications for policymakers, practitioners and future researchers in terms of understanding the factors that drive businesses to increase their carbon performance and disclosure. The study sample consists of only large firms, and future researchers can undertake similar studies with small and medium-sized firms.Practical implications: The results of this study are expected to help business managers to identify the benefits of adopting market-based regulations. Regulators can use this study’s results to evaluate if market-based regulations effectively improve corporate carbon performance and disclosure. Furthermore, stakeholders may use this study to evaluate and improve their businesses' reporting of carbon disclosure and performance.Originality/value: In contrast to current literature that has used command and control regulations as a proxy for regulation, this study uses market-based regulations as a proxy for climate change regulations. In addition, this study uses a more comprehensive measure of carbon disclosure and carbon performance compared to the previous studies. It also uses global multi-sector data from carbon disclosure project (CDP) in contrast to most current studies that use national data from annual reports of sample firms of specific sectors.

This paper analyzes the corporate governance listing requirements of major global stock exchanges to assess the level of investor protection from investment disasters, such as corporate fraudulent financial reporting (e.g. Enron, Lehman Brothers, Satyam, and Parmalat) and the 2008 financial crisis which destroyed over $1 trillion in market capitalization of U.S. companies. This investor protection issue is especially critical for emerging stock exchanges that are trying to attract foreign investors, such as in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia. This issue is assessed by comparing the corporate governance listing requirements of the well-established stock exchanges in the United States (both the New York Stock Exchange or NYSE and the over-the-counter-stock-exchange or NASDAQ), United Kingdom (London), and Singapore to the listing requirements of the emerging stock exchanges in the UAE and Russia. The effectiveness of these corporate governance listing requirements in protecting investors is assessed by determining how they address ten common corporate governance factors which represent lessons learned from recent fraudulent financial reporting scandals. These ten factors have been divided into two groups of five. The first five common factors were the same ones found in a 2010 Commission on Corporate Governance report, sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange, to investigate the 2008 financial crisis. This paper has called them “structural” factors and labelled the other five common factors as “behavioral” factors. The global listing requirement comparisons reveal that investors seem to be quite well protected from the five “structural” factors but not the five “behavioral” factors. The paper concludes with listing requirement suggestions to protect investors from these five “behavioral” factors. Investor protection from all ten factors is still needed as recent U.S. and global surveys have indicated that financial reporting manipulations are ongoing