Improving the measures of real earnings management
指出度量真实盈余管理的模型未控制竞争战略差异，导致成本差异被误判为盈余管理，并建议改进模型以避免错误推断。
Abstract Firms often change their operating policy to meet a short-term financial reporting target. Accounting researchers call this opportunistic action real earnings management (REM). They measure REM by the difference between a firm’s costs and those reported by its industry peers. Firms that pursue distinct competitive strategies also display different cost patterns than peers. However, the models that measure REM do not control for differences in competitive strategy. Hence a researcher can misinterpret a cost difference that stems from a firm’s competitive strategy as REM. The researcher would also find a spurious correlation between earnings management and a firm characteristic that varies with competitive strategy. A cause or effect relationship with earnings management could be wrongfully inferred. I suggest improvements in measurement models to avoid misspecification.