Effects of the capital structure on the management of accounting results in the Brazilian capital market

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze the relationship between the capital structure and the management of accounting results in the Brazilian capital market. In order to address this research objective, 223 non-financial companies listed on the BM&FBovespa were analyzed. The analysis addressed the management of results from the discretionary Accruals estimated by means of three different operational models (Modified Jones, KS and PAE). The capital structure was approached from two factors generated through factorial analysis, with the extraction by the main component analysis method applied to capital structure indices used in previous research. The objective of using the factorial analysis was to allow the greatest number of perspectives on the proportions between the sources of capital to be contemplated in the analysis without there being problems of high correlation between the explanatory variables of the model. The results showed that there is, in a conclusive way, a statistically significant relationship between the capital structure and the discretionary Accruals estimated through any of the three operational models. These results allow understanding that the capital structure does not act as an incentive to the management of accounting results in the Brazilian capital market.