DEALING WITH IFRS 15: ANY IMPACT ON EARNINGS MANAGEMENT? FIRST EVIDENCES FROM ITALIAN LISTED COMPANIES.

A lot of studies show that the adoption of the IFRS reduces the level of earnings management (Rudra & Bhattacharjee, 2011; Cai et al., 2008;) and, consequently, decreases the use of discretionary accruals (Guenther et al., 2010). Nowadays, the major change in the IAS/IFRS’ panorama is represented by the adoption of IFRS 15 “Revenue from contracts with customers”, mandatory from 1st January 2018. From analysis done by the “Big-Four”, rise that this new principle will have a dissimilar impact, in view of the industries which each entity belongs, because the sectors are characterized by the different types of revenues. Conscious of that, to provide empirical evidence that earnings management is more frequent in some industries and low frequent in others, adopting a statistical analysis, it was observed a sample of Italian listed companies in the period 2001-2017. Specifically, it was chosen companies that belong two sectors: “Telecommunications” and “Utilities”. The Jones Model (1991) was applied. From the statistical analysis come to light that earnings management practices is “commonly adopted” in “Telecommunications” industry which is highly impacted by the introduction of IFRS 15. That said, the lesson learned from this study is that the implementation of the new principle, wrote to discipline the accountancy of revenues, and its consequences, must be carefully analyzed and monitored by the regulators, as well as correctly adopted by managers, as the determined revenues could have an impact on the pre-existing earning management practices.