This paper focuses on an avoidance of earnings decreases and losses hypothesis in the Spanish hotel industry. In the first step, the earnings distribution (levels and changes in earnings related to one year against the previous year) is analysed to determine whether there is a discontinuity (that is, a ‘kink’) at the zero point. The methodology used is frequency histograms. The existence of a kink in the earnings distribution is an approximation of earnings management to avoid losses and earnings decreases (Burgstahler and Dichev, 1997). In the second step, the incidence of certain variables in the critical intervals of the frequency distribution (small losses against small profits and small decreases in earnings against small increases in earnings) is tested. In this context, the paper's purpose is to identify a set of variables that determine different behaviour around the benchmarks.
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