Managerial Ability and Income Smoothing: Evidence from Tehran Stock Exchange

Objective: There are two views regarding income management; The first view is in line with good income management, whose arguments are based on blocked communication. According to this concept, managers have a lot of information related to the company due to their expertise, but providing information directly by them to the public is very expensive. This prevents the direct presentation of information. In this view, income smoothing as one of the income management models can help the manager in indirectly providing confidential information to users and reducing information asymmetry. But the opposite point of view, whose arguments indicate bad income management, shows that managers use income smoothing for their personal interests and in line with opportunism. Managers who possess a high level of proficiency in improving company performance are typically expected to utilize smoothing as a means to minimize information asymmetry. On the other hand, even managers who have a lower level of ability in company performance may opt to employ smoothing techniques due to the required skillset and the potential negative consequences associated with poor smoothing decisions, such as financial abuses, damage to reputation, and job loss. Therefore, high-ability managers are generally expected to use their authority more effectively in order to disclose hidden information through the use of smoothing techniques, when compared to their low-ability counterparts.

Based on signaling theory and prior research on income smoothing and managerial ability, it is hypothesized that there is a relationship between managerial ability and income smoothing. Furthermore, it is expected that income smoothing, when associated with managerial ability, can enhance the informational value of income. In fact, capable managers are expected to use income smoothing as a tool to communicate information to the market compared to weak managers, for this reason, they use more income smoothing and this smoothing leads to an increase in the informational content of income. Specifically, this study examines whether high-ability managers use income smoothing more than low-ability managers. It also examines whether smoothing by higher-ability managers increases the information of current earnings about future performance compared to earnings smoothing by lower-ability managers.



Methods: The current research is applied in terms of purpose. To test the hypotheses of the research, following the previous studies, ordinary least square regression correlation analysis was used. The sample for this study comprises 791 firm-year observations from companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the period from 2012 to 2018.



Results: Evidence shows that managerial ability has a positive relationship with earnings smoothing, and managers with high ability provide more forward-looking information through earnings smoothing, thereby increasing the information content of earnings about future performance. Indeed, smoothing by high-ability managers increases the ability of current earnings to predict future cash flows. In contrast, smoothing by managers with low ability reduces the ability of current earnings to predict future cash flows. This conflicting effect of smoothing by low-ability managers and reducing the informational content of earnings highlights the importance of considering management ability in evaluating the usefulness of earnings smoothing. In the study, a common factor was used for smoothing at the company level based on three smoothing methods: (1) the standard deviation of income divided by the standard deviation of operating cash flows; (2) the relationship between changes in accruals and changes in operating cash flows and (3) the correlation between changes in discretionary accruals and changes in earnings before management. MAScore has been used to measure managerial ability, MAScore is a measure of management team ability derived from data envelop analysis (DEA).





Conclusion: The ability of managers can be considered as one of the main factors in using income smoothing as a tool to communicate company information to the market. In fact, capable managers use income smoothing to reduce information asymmetry and in this way indirectly signal to the market. Managerial ability can be defined as the performance efficiency of managers compared to competitors in using the company's resources to create more Income. Evidence shows that capable managers use more income smoothing. Also, the evidence shows that capable managers use income smoothing as a tool to disclose the company's secret information to the market in order to reduce information asymmetry, and in this way indirectly signal to the market. High-ability managers have superior skills in evaluating the future performance of the firms under their management, so their smoothing of earnings increases the information content of earnings. High-ability managers smooth earnings in order to disclose information in current earnings. Therefore, they improve the information content of Incomes about future performance. These findings are consistent with the view that high-ability managers use their superior skills to predict the economic prospects of their firms and use smoothing as a tool to transmit tacit information to the market. The results of this research can be useful for understanding the factors and benefits of income smoothing.