Sociedade, Contabilidade e Gestão 8(2), pp. 47-63.
ISSN/ISBN: Not available at this time. DOI: Not available at this time.
Note - this is a foreign language paper: POR
Abstract: Benford's Law (BL) is a logarithmic distribution which is useful to detect abnormal patterns of digits in number sets. It is often used as a primary data auditing method for detecting traces of errors, illegal practices or undesired occurrences, such as fraud and earning management. In this descriptive study, I analyzed the financial information (revenue and expenditure) of the registered charitable hospitals located in Ontario and Quebec, which have the majority (71.4%) of these organizations within Canada. The aim of this study was to verify the reliability of the financial data of the respective hospitals, using the probability distribution predicted by Benford’s Law as a proxy of reliability. The sample was composed by 1,334 observations related to 339 entities operating in the tax year 2009 and 328 entities in 2010, gathered from the Canada Revenue Agency’s database. To analyze the discrepancies between the actual and expected frequencies of the significant-digit, two statistics were calculated: Z-test and Pearson’s chi-square test. The results show that, with a confidence level of 95%, the data set of the organizations located in Ontario and Quebec have similar distribution to the BL, suggesting that, in a preliminary analysis, their financial data are free from bias.
Bibtex:
@article{,
author = {Marco Milani Filho},
title = {A Confiabilidade dos Dados Financeiros de Hospitais Filantrópicos Canadenses: Um Estudo Empírico Baseado na Lei de Benford},
journal = {Sociedade, Contabilidade e Gestão},
volume = {8},
number = {2},
year = {2013},
issn = {1982-7342},
doi = {10.21446/scg_ufrj.v8i2.13290},
url = {https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/scg/article/view/13290},
pages = {47--63},
}
Reference Type: Journal Article
Subject Area(s): Accounting