COVID-19 outbreak and earnings management: evidence from Vietnam

The paper investigates various firms’ earnings management (EM) during the COVID-19, and post-COVID-19 periods in Vietnam from 2016 to 2023. It examines 635 Vietnamese-listed non-financial companies from 2016 to 2023. The paper employs a two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) approach to run the results. The results show that Vietnamese managers tended to use accrual earnings management (AEM) to deal with the negative impact of the outbreak of COVID-19. However, the firms tended to reduce the use of AEM and aggressively use real earnings management (REM) in the post-COVID −19 periods. The results of the paper contribute to the literature on EM behavior during COVID-19 and in the post-COVID-19 period. Moreover, it also has implications for lawmakers and investors.