Abstract
This empirical study aims mainly to investigate the effect of both dividend payments
(DP) and five firm`s attributes (firm size, firm leverage, firm performance, legal form
and audit quality) on earnings quality (EQ) of the most active listed firms in Egypt. A sample of 552 firm-year observations during four years from 2014 to 2017 was used. Hierarchical Multiple Regression (HMR) was used to regress the six independent variables on firms’ EQ through the absence of firms’ earnings management (EM), which
was estimated through discretionary accruals (DAC). Main results show that there
is some divergence in EM practices over the four years and might suggest that EM by listed firms in Egypt exists especially in the first two years (2014 and 2015); however, relatively lower EM practices are found in the last two years (2016 and 2017).
Correlation results show a number of significant relationships between the EM and
three independent variables (firm leverage, legal form and audit quality). HMR results are in line with the results obtained via Pearson correlation.