Ownership Structure and Earnings Management: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam Real Estate Sector

The young real estate market in Vietnam, an emerging country in Asia, has been growing remarkably. This is an attractive channel for investors, but it seems to be an unstable market and have high potential source of earnings management while investing in real estate companies listed in Vietnamese stock market. The research has been conducted to investigate the impact of the ownership structure on the earnings management of Vietnamese listed real estate companies. The research methodology includes four statistical approaches OLS, FEM, REM and REM (robust) that are employed to address econometric issues and to improve the accuracy of the regression coefficients. The research sample consists of 180 firm-year observations for 36 real estate companies listed on Vietnamese stock market over a period of five years, i.e. from 2014 to 2018. The results show that, while state ownership showed a positive influence, managerial ownership played negative significant roles in relation to earnings management. This research has implications for designing a better ownership structure in the Vietnamese real estate sector and enhancing information quality to protect investors.