The effect of co-opted directors on real earnings management

Co-opted directors are those elected after a CEO takes office. In this paper, we examine how co-opted directors affect real earnings management. Our results show that, due to the lack of director independence, a board with more co-opted directors plays a weaker monitoring role, which significantly increases the level of real earnings management. A DID setting using the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 as a natural experiment demonstrates that there is most likely a causal effect of board co-option on real earnings management. Furthermore, we find that this causal effect is more pronounced in firms with poor corporate governance.