Purpose: State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have a growing importance in the economic and social life of both developed and developing countries, being present in their key sectors such as telecommunication, electricity, transportation. The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive review of the up to date literature on the relation between State Ownership and Earnings management.

Design/methodology/approach: An examination of the literature was undertaken to review the quantitative studies that analyze the existence or the non-existence of a relation between State Ownership and Earnings management, comparing population and data set used, methodology applied and result achieved. To find studies relevant to the issue, we utilized Google Scholar and delimited the research to 20 top Scholarly Journals, over the interval 1996-2016.

Findings: The available literature seems to offer contrasting viewpoints regarding the relationship between public ownership and earnings management, even though studies generally show a slight prevalence towards a negative relationship. This means that the quality of the earnings published in the budgets of public owned enterprises must be slightly higher than the earnings published by private companies.

Research limitations/implications: Almost all studies reviewed present limitations that hinder the assumption of general rules regarding the obtained results. At the same time, the different studies do not always use the same system to measure earnings management activities.

Practical implications: The paper might offer interesting implications for central and local governments, in order to influence the decisions on their intervention in the market.

Originality/value: To our knowledge, this is the first study trying to attempt this emerging goal.