We study theoretically the effect of product market competition on the incentives to engage in earnings manipulation, and we show how manipulating earnings is particularly rewarding in more competitive markets since the boost in market value of reporting good earnings is especially important. Using a panel dataset of about 70,000 observations spanning the period 1989–2011, we document that the competitive environment is an important determinant of Jones type discretionary accruals and it also affects real earnings management. In additional analysis, we find that the effect of competition on earnings manipulation is particularly important for companies that seem to be underperforming their competitors and that the competition‐earnings management linkage is moderated by the degree of information visibility at the industry level.