ICMRED 2025

Workshop Organizer

Organizer

University of Aberdeen Business School

Chair

Dr. Naser Makarem

Assistant professor in University of Aberdeen

Dr. Naser Makarem is an assistant professor in accounting at the University of Aberdeen, UK. He is the leader of MSc Accounting and Finance programme and Partnerships Programmes Director at Aberdeen Business School. Dr Makarem teaches several courses in the area of financial accounting both in the UK and at overseas partners in China and Qatar. He supervises PhD students and has research interests in the broad area of financial reporting and particularly earnings management.

Dr. Makarem’s research mainly focuses on factors influencing corporate financial reporting. In particular, he studies how social, economic and political factors affect earnings management. He is also interested in changes in earnings management behaviour over time as well as the impact of regulatory environment and political and economic factors on such changes. He also studies how earnings manipulation is restricted by factors such as external audit and corporate governance.

Call for Papers

Topics:

The topics are primarily relevant to researchers in accounting and finance concerned with corporate governance, financial reporting, and credit risk assessment, they are useful to a wide business audience including management scholars, particularly those with strategic decision-making and organizational behavior interests. The study is, therefore, highly relevant across disciplines, including accounting, finance, management, economics, and public policy. Specific topics include but are not limited to:

  • Zombie Firms
  • Earnings Management
  • Accruals Management
  • Real Activities Manipulation
  • Financial Distress

Background:

Zombie firms are those that continue to operate even though they are economically unviable due to subsidies, low-interest loans, or other forms of external support. Typically, they have low productivity and low profitability, with interest coverage ratios that are sustainably below the operational threshold. Long periods of low interest rates-as well as crisis-era financial policies like those enacted during and following the 2008 financial crisis-have been blamed for perpetuating zombie firms globally. This has been one of the unintended consequences of such policies, which have allowed these firms easier access to credit so they could continue operating.

Research also shows that persistent zombie firms contribute to resource misallocation, depressing overall economic productivity. Moreover, external support provided to these firms typically presents incentives for opportunistic behaviour by their managers, such as earnings management to mask financial distress, which in turn undermines market transparency and creditor decision-making. The objective is to help regulators and monetary authorities design regulatory and monetary reforms that advance economic efficiency and financial stability.

Goal/Rationale:

Studying earnings manipulation by zombie firms is important for a number of reasons. First, zombie firms are expected to manipulate earnings so as to make their financial health seem better than it actually is. This decreases the reliability of the financial reports. Such deception affects stakeholders' capability to make appropriate decisions. It distorts the allocation of capital in financial markets. Second, zombie firms mislead creditors into continuing their supply of funds by using accrual-based or real earnings management to artificially inflate profitability, which exacerbates the possibility of loan defaults and further perpetuates systemic financial instability. Third, zombie firms’ survival, which is at least to some extent facilitated by earnings manipulation, locks up resources that would otherwise be better utilized by more productive firms. Understanding how zombie firms circumvent financial and regulatory systems through manipulation can be helpful in policymaking by ensuring that measures intended to support viable firms do not perpetuate inefficiencies. This study highlights the need for stricter oversight to enhance market efficiency and stability.

Submission

Prospective authors are kindly invited to submit full papers that include title, abstract, introduction, tables, figures, conclusion and references. It is unnecessary to submit an abstract in advance. Please submit your papers in English.

Each paper should be no less than 4 pages. One regular registration can cover a paper of 6 pages, and additional pages will be charged. Please format your paper well according to the conference template below before submission. Paper Template Download

Please prepare your paper in both .doc/.docx and .pdf format and submit your full paper by email with both formats attached directly to ws_aberdeen@icmred.org

Important Dates:

Submission & Payment

Type Regular Submission
Paper Submission April 11, 2025
Review Process 2 weeks
Revise & Acceptance 2 weeks
Registration & Payment 2 weeks

Fees

Fees (VAT Included) Amount
Registration and Publishing Fee (6 pages included) $450
Additional Page $40/extra page

Publication

Workshop Proceedings:

Accepted papers will be published in Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences (AEMPS) (Print ISSN: 2754-1169) and will be submitted to Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI), Crossref, CNKI, Portico, Google Scholar, and other databases for indexing. The situation may be affected by factors among databases like processing time, workflow, policy, etc.

Title: Advances in Economics Management and Political Sciences (AEMPS)
Press: EWA Publishing, United Kingdom
ISSN: 2754-1169 2754-1177 (electronic)

Accepted manuscripts will be submitted to the publisher on a rolling basis. Early-registered papers are expected to be published and printed earlier.

Workshop Info:

Workshop Title:

Earnings Manipulation by Zombie Firms

Date:

April 18th, 2025 (UTC+1)

Venue:

University of Aberdeen, King's College, Aberdeen AB24 3FX, UK

How to Participate:

Poster

The workshop provides an opportunity for poster exhibition. Authors who are interested in presenting a poster, please submit your materials (prefer in .pdf) to ws_aberdeen@icmred.org before March 7, 2025.

Detailed information on your presentation date and time will be confirmed closer to the workshop. If you have any questions about your presentation or the workshop, please email ws_aberdeen@icmred.org .

Poster Presentation Guidelines

  1. Poster presentations must be prepared using the template provided:
    2. *Poster layout template for poster presentation (download)
    *Poster layout background (download)
  2. Posters should generally be in A1 size (width: 594mm x height: 841mm) and include the followings:
    3. Title, author and co-author names, and the affiliation(s) information.
    Body parts, including "Abstract", "Introduction", "Methods", "Results", "Discussion" and "Conclusions".
  3. Presenters are suggested to set the font size properly and avoid placing anything at the margin part of the poster as it will be difficult to view.
  4. Posters should be well illustrated. All the pictures used should be high quality and with high resolution.

(You can refer to the instructions for more detailed information. Additional presentation guidelines may be announced by workshop committees.)

Attend in person

If you want to attend the workshop on-site, please email ws_aberdeen@icmred.org. The workshop seats are limited. Both contributors and non-contributors who wish to participate in the workshop in person need to apply to the workshop organizers.

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