This study investigates the role of salient events on accrual-based and real earnings management activities. For people using availability heuristics, the salience of an event may temporarily increase perceived risk even though the actual risk does not change, and individuals making decisions by availability heuristics are subsequently more likely to assign a higher probability to unrelated negative future events. I use terrorist attacks and mass shootings as salient events and conjecture that the negative effects of terrorist attacks and mass shootings spill over and lead to pessimistic risk assessments of financial reporting choices. The findings show a decrease in accrual-based and real earnings management for firms located in the impacted regions. The documented effects are driven by firms with high information asymmetry levels and pessimistic annual reports. Additional analysis reveals that affected firms decrease the readability of their annual reports, suggesting affected firms engage in a more complex narrative disclosure. The findings of this paper support the argument that managers exhibit a cognitive bias which affects their financial reporting choices.

本研究调查了显着事件对应计利润管理活动和实际盈余管理活动的作用。对于使用可用性启发法的人来说，即使实际风险没有改变，事件的显着性也可能会暂时增加感知风险，并且通过可用性启发法做出决策的个人随后更有可能将更高的概率分配给不相关的负面未来事件。我将恐怖袭击和大规模枪击事件作为突出事件，并推测恐怖袭击和大规模枪击事件的负面影响会溢出，并导致对财务报告选择的悲观风险评估。调查结果显示，受影响地区的公司的应计利润管理和实际盈余管理有所减少。记录在案的影响是由信息不对称程度高和年度报告悲观的公司驱动的。进一步的分析显示，受影响的公司降低了年度报告的可读性，这表明受影响的公司进行了更复杂的叙述性披露。本文的研究结果支持这样的论点：管理者表现出的认知偏差会影响他们的财务报告选择。