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Geyer, D (2010)

Cheating behavior and the Benford’s Law

Preprint.

ISSN/ISBN: Not available at this time. DOI: Not available at this time.



Abstract: Previous studies (Carslaw, 1988; Thomas, 1989; Niskanen & Keloharju, 2000) have shown that companies' managers tend to round-up the first digits of reported earnings (i.e. for companies reporting profits). According to Carslaw (1988), this type of behaviour is inspired by the existence of the so-called $1.99 phenomenon where a price of $1 . 99 is perceived as being abnormally lower than one of $2.00. In the current study, we try to determine whether a sample of students (laboratory experiment) also engage in this type of 'earnings rounding-up behaviour'. Analogous to the earlier studies, our study compares observed and expected frequencies for the second-from-the-left digit in earnings proposed by the students. Our results suggest that the students tend to round earnings.


Bibtex:
@misc{, title={Cheating behavior and the Benford’s Law}, author={Dominique Geyer}, url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:201913864} }


Reference Type: Preprint

Subject Area(s): Accounting, Psychology