Earning Management and Dividend Policy: Empirical evidence from Pakistani listed companies

Abstract

The study is an effort to find out the impact of earning management on dividend policy in Pakistan. A set of listed companies from Karachi stock exchange (KSE) 100 indexes have been investigated to analyze the relationship from the year 2005 to 2009 in Pakistan. Dividend policy has been measured by dividend payout whereas earning management has been quantified by discretionary accruals and discretionary accrual is used as a proxy to determine earning management. Modified cross sectional model (1995) has been used to measure discretionary accruals. Regression analysis shows that earning management has impact on dividend policy that rejects our null hypothesis. But coefficient shows that the relationship is so weak that is near to no relationship. Reason behind this no impact is economic decline period, because earning management changes every year. In the decline period our earning management was increase and the companies starts downsizing divided payment.

Key words: Dividend Policy, Earning Management, Karachi Stock Exchange.