Does board of director's age impact earnings management in agriculture? Case of Serbian agricultural sector

This paper investigates if board of director’s age impact earnings management activities which will make a contribution to this very actual topic. Our sample is consisting of all Serbian agriculture companies listed on the Belgrade Stock Exchange for the period of 2013- 2016. For detecting earnings management practices we have used the Performance ADJ Jones Model, which is showed as the most appropriate for companies in our sample. The results show that there is no impact of board of director’s age on earnings management practices. We also find no evidence of impact of chairman’s age on earnings management practices. Relationship between gender diversity and earning management practices has not been found; even when a woman is the chairman no relationship between the variables was revealed. The women made 22% of the whole members of the boards, and 55% of boards are mixed-gender. But we have discovered that the women members of the boards of directors are significantly younger than men members. In 42.11% of mixed-gender boards, the woman is the youngest member of the board of directors, while in 60.87% of mixed-gender boards, women are younger than the average age of the members of these boards. This finding throws new light on gender studies.