Benford's law first significant digit and distribution distances for testing the reliability of financial reports in developing countries

摘要

We discuss a common suspicion about reported financial data, in 10 industrialsectors of the 6 so called "main developing countries" over the time interval[2000-2014]. These data are examined through Benford's law first significantdigit and through distribution distances tests. It is shown that severalvisually anomalous data have to be a priori removed. Thereafter, thedistributions much better follow the first digit significant law, indicatingthe usefulness of a Benford's law test from the research starting line. Thesame holds true for distance tests. A few outliers are pointed out.