This study follows prior studies on cash – based activities manipulations to investigate total levels of cash – based earnings management relative to the association between cash – based earnings management and audit firm size of companies in Nigeria. First, the study measures the normal level of real activities by focusing on three manipulation schemes namely, manipulation of sales, overproduction, and reduction in discretionary expenses. The normal levels of each type of real activities manipulation were measured as the residual from relevant estimation models. The abnormal CFO, abnormal production costs and abnormal discretionary expenses were computed as the difference between the actual values and the normal levels predicted from the respective models while the composite value of the three variables is the estimate for cash – based earnings management. Based on a sample of 342 companies – year observations from the NSE and applying audit firm size as a measure, comprehensive multivariate analyses were conducted on archival data covering 2006 – 2011. The result showed that audit firm size exerts significant negative relationship with cash – based earnings management of quoted companies in Nigeria. It is suggested that companies in Nigeria should improve their earnings quality only through sales growth and cost control strategies and present distinct reports on earnings quality; company auditors should issue Integrated Audit Quality Assurance Reports based on earnings quality assessments statutorily backed by earnings monitoring of companies in Nigeria; while regulatory agencies should issue authoritative codes of best practice in Nigeria
Keywords: Audit Firm Size, Audit Quality, Cash Flow from Operations., Earnings Management, Earnings Quality
