Don't Touch My Cheese: Short Selling Pressure, Executive Compensation Justification, and Real Activity Earnings Management

摘要

This article aims at investigating the effects of short selling on a firm's executive compensation and earnings management. We use a panel data set of Chinese public firms from 2007 to 2014 to test our hypotheses. We find that the level of excess compensation in short-selling firms is greater than that in non-short-selling firms. Our further analysis shows that the executives of the short-selling firms will justify their excess compensation by improving the pay-performance sensitivity, which is accomplished through the real earnings management. Finally, we find that there is more prominent decrease/increase in accrual/real earnings management in short-selling firms.