The Influence of Administrative Division Adjustment on Enterprise Earnings Management: A Quasi-Natural Experiment on City–County Consolidation

City–county consolidation is a common measure used by many cities to promote urbanization. This study develops the theoretical transmission mechanism, “city-county consolidation intensifies competition in the enterprise market improves the earnings management level of enterprises,” to analyze the influence of city–county consolidation on enterprises’ earnings management. An empirical analysis using the difference-in-differences (DID) method was conducted on data of industrial enterprises from 1999 to 2006. The results show that city–county consolidation promotes motivation for the use of enterprises’ earnings management. Second, city–county consolidation significantly intensifies enterprises’ downward earnings management behavior. Third, following city–county consolidation, non-state-owned enterprises are more strongly motivated to implement earnings management than state-owned enterprises. Fourth, city–county consolidation only significantly impacts the earnings management of enterprises affiliated with counties; it does not significantly impact the earnings management of those affiliated with central, provincial, or municipal governments. Therefore, this study provides empirical evidence from the perspective of market competition, which has important reference significance for urbanization development to improve national governance capacity by optimizing administrative divisions.

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