Does the disclosure of related party transactions impact the real earnings management of companies in the Middle East region? Evidence of the propping hypothesis

Hamza, Sarra Elleuch; Maghraoui, Randa; Attia, Meriam

doi:10.22059/ijms.2026.401781.677976

Does the disclosure of related party transactions impact the real earnings management of companies in the Middle East region? Evidence of the propping hypothesis

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

¹ Department of Accounting and Finance, ISCAE, Manouba University, Manouba, Tunisia

² Department of Accounting and Finance, ISG Bizerta, LIGUE Laboratory, Carthage University, Tunisia

³ Manouba University

10.22059/ijms.2026.401781.677976

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the impact of the level of disclosure on Related Party Transactions on Real Earnings Management in the Middle-East.

We test three hypotheses on six countries in the Middle-East using a disclosure index that we developed based on the requirements of IAS24 and the indices suggested in prior studies. We assess REM through Roychowdhury's (2006) models. We estimate our panel data models with the GLS method. We estimate simultaneous equations models using 2SLS in robustness analyses.

We identify a negative relationship between REM and RPT disclosure except for Kuwait, supporting the tunnelling hypothesis. In contrast, we observe a positive relationship, validating the propping hypothesis for companies involved in transactions with Associated-Companies or Joint-Ventures and in companies operating in key-sectors.

Regulatory authorities, rating agencies, and auditors should distinguish between RPT used for legitimate purposes and those exploited to realize opportunistic gains, and increase intervention to minimize the latter.

Although the tunnelling hypothesis is the most commonly used to explain the association between RPT disclosure and EM, we cannot validate it in all contexts. By scrutinizing uncontrolled entities, rather than focusing on controlled ones, we show that the propping hypothesis supersedes the tunnelling one for this special category.

Keywords