Purpose: This study examines how accounting conservatism, firm size, and earnings persistence are associated with earnings quality in Indonesian food and beverage firms during 2021-2024, a period of post-pandemic operating adjustment.
Methods: Using audited annual-report data from 50 purposively selected IDX-listed firms (200 firm-year observations), the study estimates an accrual-based model after the documented data-screening process. Earnings quality is proxied by signed Modified Jones discretionary accruals, conservatism by the Givoly-Hayn accrual measure, size by logged total assets, and persistence by an autoregressive earnings coefficient.
Results: Conservatism and firm size are negatively associated with discretionary accruals (p < .001), which indicates higher quality under the study’s inverse proxy. Persistence is not significant (p = .704). The joint model is significant, but its high explanatory power requires caution because the principal measures contain related accrual information.
Limitations: The evidence is sector-specific, uses signed discretionary accruals, relies on a short persistence window, and inherits the source thesis’s undocumented case-level rule for the 14 outlier exclusions. The observational design supports association rather than causal inference.
Conclusions: Prudential recognition and organizational scale correspond to lower discretionary accruals, whereas persistence does not explain this accrual-based quality proxy. The results support stronger review of accrual judgments and internal controls, especially when interpreting stable earnings during recovery periods.
Contributions: The findings extend Indonesian evidence by connecting reporting prudence, organizational monitoring capacity, and earnings sustainability while keeping the economic concept of earnings quality distinct from its discretionary-accrual proxy.