The Effect of Board Characteristics on Real Activities Manipulation in Tunisian Banks

The succession of financial scandals and resounding bank failures that characterized the economic environment over the past three decades have given more weight to governance mechanisms. As such, considered to be one of the most important internal governance mechanisms, the board of directors has shown its strengths in controlling earnings manipulation, in particular those linked to real activities. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of board characteristics on real earnings management. Using panel data econometrics, on all Tunisian commercial banks over the period 2008-2019, we show that board gender diversity has a disciplinary role in real earnings management as measured by discretionary revenue on equity securities. However, we show that board independence increases the real earnings management. As for board size, board duality, as well as the number of meetings carried out per year by the board of directors, we prove that they have no significant effect on real earnings management.