Are Financing Needs a Constraint to Earnings Management? Evidence for Private Portuguese Firms.

In this paper I test two intuitions. First, that small private firms have incentives to undertake earnings management. Second, that firms’ financing needs are one of such incentives, constraining the sense of the income manipulation. The tax incentive is deemed to motivate firms into adopting income decreasing actions aimed at reducing the tax bill, and is especially strong in an environment where they are managed by the owners and with close alignment between the accounting and tax systems. However, the debt incentive, which tends to affect mainly those firms with high financing needs, is expected to act as a constraint to the adoption of income decreasing actions, given that firms want to signal their quality to banks. The empirical evidence obtained from a sample of small private Portuguese firms fully supports my intuitions, showing that firms with low financing needs tend to focus on the minimization of the tax bill. Those with high needs are more pervasive in reporting larger profits. Moreover, firms with audited accounts seem to show a lower likelihood of reporting profits, and tentative explanations are either that they are more constrained in adopting earnings management actions, or that audited accounting may act as a signal of their quality, a kind of substitute for the signal underlying the sign and size of reported earnings.earnings management, incentives, income tax, small firms, Portugal.

Unequal Impact of Conservatism on Accrual Measures and Drivers: Implications for the Specification of Accrual Models

This study makes two main contributions to the literature. Firstly, it tests empirically the relative timeliness of accrual measures and earnings components used as explanatory variables in accrual models (“accrual drivers”) regarding the impact of conservatism. Secondly, taking into account the empirical evidence on such a timeliness, it discusses intuitively potential implications for the specification of (traditional) accrual models and the quality of discretionary accrual estimates. It concludes that common accrual models, as Jones (1991), are misspecified. They have a dependent variable (accruals) asymmetrically affected by conservatism, and one or more explanatory variables that are not affected, inducing a non-systematic measurement error in estimating discretionary accruals.accruals; accrual models; discretionary accruals; conservatism.

Manipulação para Evitar Perdas: o Impacto do Conservantismo

In this paper I analyze the interaction between firms’ earnings management behavior and conservatism. I predict that firms having conservatism-related bad news in the period have more pervasive earnings management than firms having good news. Departing from Burgstahler and Dichev (1997) methodology to detect earnings management, and taking the sign of market returns as a proxy for conservatism effects, I find empirical evidence that supports the prediction of an interaction between firms’ earnings management behavior and conservatism. The evidence is thus consistent with the discontinuities around zero in the earnings distributions being driven, at least partly, by firms’ earnings management behavior, and is robust to controlling for other effects mentioned in the literature as potential determinants of such discontinuities.Earnings management, conservatism, earnings distribution discontinuities.

“Accruals” Discricionários: o Erro de Estimação Induzido pelo Conservantismo

This paper discusses the sign of the expected measurement error in discretionary accruals (DAC) estimates when accrual models do not control for the asymmetric treatment of gains and losses underlying conservatism. I find that DAC in firms with “bad news” are expected to be understated (positive measurement error), while those in “good news” firms will be overstated (negative measurement error). Based on this original result and using graphical analysis I discuss an empirical illustration, which corroborates the expectations.accruals, accrual models, earnings management.

Welcoming Remarks - 2021-03-25 : Open Lecture - UL-N (Porto)

Minerva : Revista de Estudos Laborais. - ISSN 1647-0753. - V. 10, n. 3 (2020) 269

Como integrar as TIC em contexto didático das Artes explorando a distribuição EVTux na área do cinema de animação

Com a implementação do Plano Tecnológico da Educação e consequente apetrechamento das Escolas com recursos tecnológicos avançados, surge agora a necessidade de criar condições favoráveis para a efetiva integração das TIC no currículo, nomeadamente na área das Artes. Decorrente das características singulares desta área curricular, são muitas as ferramentas digitais que podemos utilizar em contexto educativo mobilizando-as para experiências de aprendizagem baseadas em projetos que integrem as tecnologias. Este é o caso do EVTux, uma distribuição livre de Linux que permite a criação efetiva de projetos de cinema de animação em contexto educativo com recurso às tecnologias, caso que agora se apresenta como exemplo neste artigo e que atualmente faz parte de uma síntese do trabalho que se integra no projeto europeu TACCLE2 no qual participamos.With the introduction of the Technological Program for Education, schools were equipped with the right conditions to really implement and use technological resources. It is now the time to create favorable conditions to an effective integration of Information and Communication Technologies in the curricula, namely in the Arts field. Because this is a very specific field of studies, there are many digital tools that may be used in an educational context and then transferred into learning experiences based on projects using technologies. This is what EVTux is all about – a free Linux distribution that allows the creation of animated film projects in educational contexts using technologies. This case is presented as an example in this article and is, at the moment, part of a work integrated in the European project TACCLE2 in which we participate

Private equity investment committee proposal - medpace capital structure

Medpace is one of the world’s leading Contract Research Organizations, by revenue, and it differentiates itself by focusing on full-service clinical trials for small and mid-sized biopharma clients. Its strong positioning in a niche market, the high projected industry growth, its strong and stable FCFs, and experienced management team make it an ideal target, which would be further improved by our developed business plan that will enhance its operations, expand internationally, and capitalize on M&A trends. Our proposed transaction is expected to deliver a money multiple of 3.28x and an IRR of 26.84%, representing a strong investment opportunity

Technologies and digital competences in portuguese education: history of its integration in pedagogical practices since the beginning of the 20th century

This study aims to analyse the evolutionary context of the introduction of technology in Portuguese schools, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, and to identify the digital competences of Portuguese teachers at different educational levels. The analysis, qualitative and quantitative in nature, allowed us to conclude that technologies had a slow diffusion in Portuguese schools, because of the scarcity of resources and residual investment in teacher training, giving the use of technology in school a more irregular and playful character rather than truly integrated in pedagogical practices to promote the quality of learning. Although in recent years there has been still some conservatism in the use of technology, very focused on its instrumental use, there have been more practices with pedagogical intent and more focused on the active participation of students, also noting the growing importance of teacher training in this field of digital technologies, with the aim of making teachers more competent and fluent in the pedagogical use of digital. Furthermore, the study focused on the teachers' perception of their digital competences in three dimensions: the teachers' professional and pedagogical competences and the students' competences from the DigCompEdu framework and the self-assessment questionnaire of digital competences built from the same framework - DigCompEdu Check-In. The analysis of the answers obtained in this questionnaire (collected from the participation of 434 teachers of Basic and Secondary Education and 118 of Higher Education) showed that teachers need to increase their levels of digital proficiency through specific training, since they present, globally, a moderate level of digital proficiency - level B1 -Integrators- being the areas 4 - Evaluation - and 6 - Digital empowerment of students, the ones that present the greatest weaknesses

¿Pueden los MOOC cerrar la brecha de oportunidades?: La contribución del diseño pedagógico social inclusivo

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are open courses made available online at no cost to the user and designed to scale up, allowing for a large number of participants. As such, they are a disruptive new development which has the potential to widen access to higher education since they contribute to social inclusion, the dissemination of knowledge and pedagogical innovation. However, assuring quality learning opportunities to all cannot be simply reduced to allowing free access to higher education. On the contrary, it implies assuring equitable opportunities for every participant to succeed in their learning experience. This goal depends on the quality of the learning design. To be successful, a massive open online learning experience has to empower learners and to facilitate a networked learning environment. In fact, MOOCs are designed to serve a high heterogeneity of profiles, with many differences regarding learning needs and preferences, prior knowledge, contexts of participation and diversity of online platforms. Personalization can play a key role in this process. In this article, the authors describe the iMOOC pedagogical model and its later derivative, the sMOOC model, and explain how they contributed to the introduction of the principles of diversity and learner equity to MOOC design, allowing for a clear differentiation of learning paths and also of virtual environments, while empowering participants to succeed in their learning experiences. Using a design-based research approach, a comparative analysis of two course iterations each representing each model is also presented and discussed.Los cursos en línea abiertos y masivos (MOOC) son cursos abiertos disponibles en línea sin costo para el usuario y diseñados para ampliarse, permitiendo un gran número de participantes. Como tales, son un nuevo desarrollo disruptivo que tiene el potencial de ampliar el acceso a la educación superior, ya que contribuyen a la inclusión social, la difusión del conocimiento y la innovación pedagógica. Sin embargo, garantizar oportunidades de aprendizaje de calidad para todos no puede reducirse simplemente a permitir el acceso gratuito a la educación superior. Por el contrario, implica asegurar oportunidades equitativas para que cada participante tenga éxito en su experiencia de aprendizaje. Este objetivo depende de la calidad del diseño de aprendizaje. Para tener éxito, una experiencia de aprendizaje en línea abierta y masiva debe empoderar a los alumnos y facilitar un entorno de aprendizaje en red. De hecho, los MOOC están diseñados para servir a una gran heterogeneidad de perfiles, con muchas diferencias con respecto a las necesidades y preferencias de aprendizaje, conocimiento previo, contextos de participación y diversidad de plataformas en línea. La personalización puede jugar un papel clave en este proceso. En este artículo, los autores describen el modelo pedagógico iMOOC y su derivada posterior, el modelo sMOOC, y explican cómo contribuyeron a la introducción de los principios de diversidad y equidad en el diseño MOOC, lo que permite una clara diferenciación de las rutas de aprendizaje y también de entornos virtuales, al tiempo que permite a los participantes tener éxito en sus experiencias de aprendizaje. Usando un enfoque de design-based research, también se presenta y discute un análisis comparativo de dos iteraciones del curso, cada una representando cada modelo