Earnings Management Practices in Indonesia: Before and During COVID-19

The purpose of this study is to compare earning management practices in manufacturing company before and during COVID-19 pandemic. The study use 495 manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange from 2017 to 2022 as sample. Earning management are compared between 2017-2019 (prepandemic year) and 2020-2022 (pandemic year). Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test are performed to compared between prepandemic year and pandemic year. The finding show that earnings management before COVID-19 is different from earning managements during COVID-19. There was a significant increasing discretionary accruals from 2017 to 2022, suggesting the firms engaged in more income increasing strategy to reported earnings at the pandemic year. The existence of the COVID-19 pandemic motivate management to do the earnings management. This study explores the consequences of the pandemic to earning management activity also enriches accounting research on economic crisis.