This paper investigated the impact of religiosity on accrual and real earnings management. Unlike most previous studies which consider this issue in a multi-religious setting, we use a mono-religious setting, specifically Poland where the Roman Catholic Church holds a dominant position. Thus, we are able to study the impact of religiosity on earnings management ignoring the impact of different religious denominations magnified by cultural factors. Our study focuses on the impact the Catholic religion has on earnings management. A novelty of this study is our proxy for religiosity. We use the communicantes ratio applicable only to Catholic and Orthodox denominations. This study contributes to the literature by providing a broader picture of the impact of religiosity on earnings management. Based on a sample of Polish companies, we find that Catholicism positively (negatively) influences the level of accrual (real) earnings management. We carefully examine the issue of differences between religiosity and personal faith and highlight the problems related to selecting a proxy for religiosity. The results indicate that a firm's preferred earnings management strategy depends heavily on the values shared by the national community. The majority of previous studies find that religiosity has a negative (positive) impact on accrual (real) earnings management. We provide empirical evidence that this is not always the case. There exists a setting in which the impact of religiosity is opposite, and the mechanisms through which religiosity influences earnings management are much more complicated than what was previously assumed.

中文翻译：

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天主教对盈余管理的影响：以波兰为例

本文调查了宗教信仰对应计和实际盈余管理的影响。与之前大多数在多宗教环境中考虑这个问题的研究不同，我们使用单一宗教环境，特别是罗马天主教会占据主导地位的波兰。因此，我们能够研究宗教信仰对盈余管理的影响，而忽略文化因素放大的不同宗教教派的影响。我们的研究侧重于天主教对盈余管理的影响。这项研究的一个新颖之处是我们的宗教信仰。我们使用通讯器比率仅适用于天主教和东正教教派。本研究通过更广泛地了解宗教信仰对盈余管理的影响，为文献做出了贡献。基于波兰公司的样本，我们发现天主教对应计（实际）盈余管理水平产生积极（消极）影响。我们仔细研究了宗教信仰和个人信仰之间的差异问题，并强调了与选择宗教信仰代理相关的问题。结果表明，公司偏好的盈余管理策略在很大程度上取决于国家社区共享的价值观。大多数先前的研究发现，宗教信仰对应计（实际）盈余管理具有负面（正面）影响。我们提供的经验证据表明情况并非总是如此。