The Accounting Review 

About: The Accounting Review is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Earnings & Audit. It has an ISSN identifier of 0001-4826. Over the lifetime, 1438 publications have been published receiving 160371 citations. The journal is also known as: Accounting Review.

The Quality of Accruals and Earnings: The Role of Accrual Estimation Errors

Abstract: This paper suggests a new measure of one aspect of the quality of working capital accruals and earnings. One role of accruals is to shift or adjust the recognition of cash flows over time so that t...

Do Stock Prices Fully Reflect Information in Accruals and Cash flows about Future Earnings

Abstract: This paper investigates whether stock prices reflect information about future earnings contained in the accrual and cash flow components of current earnings. The extent to which current earnings performance persists into the future is shown to depend on the relative magnitudes of the cash and accrual components of current earnings. However, stock prices are found to act as if investors "fixate" on earnings, failing to reflect fully information contained in the accrual and cash flow components of current earnings until that information impacts future earnings.

Costs of Equity and Earnings Attributes

Abstract: We examine the relation between the cost of equity capital and seven attributes of earnings: accrual quality, persistence, predictability, smoothness, value relevance, timeliness, and conservatism. We characterize the first four attributes as accounting‐based because they are typically measured using accounting information only. We characterize the last three attributes as market‐based because proxies for these constructs are typically based on relations between market data and accounting data. Based on theoretical models predicting a positive association between information quality and cost of equity, we test for and find that firms with the least favorable values of each attribute, considered individually, generally experience larger costs of equity than firms with the most favorable values. The largest cost of equity effects are observed for the accounting‐based attributes, in particular, accrual quality. These findings are robust to controls for innate determinants of the earnings attributes (firm siz...

Voluntary Nonfinancial Disclosure and the Cost of Equity Capital: The Initiation of Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting

Abstract: We examine a potential benefit associated with the initiation of voluntary disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities: a reduction in firms’ cost of equity capital. We find that firms with a high cost of equity capital in the previous year tend to initiate disclosure of CSR activities in the current year and that initiating firms with superior social responsibility performance enjoy a subsequent reduction in the cost of equity capital. Further, initiating firms with superior social responsibility performance attract dedicated institutional investors and analyst coverage. Moreover, these analysts achieve lower absolute forecast errors and dispersion. Finally, we find that firms exploit the benefit of a lower cost of equity capital associated with the initiation of CSR disclosure. Initiating firms are more likely than non-initiating firms to raise equity capital following the initiations; among firms raising equity capital, initiating firms raise a significantly larger amount t...

Real and Accrual‐Based Earnings Management in the Pre‐ and Post‐Sarbanes‐Oxley Periods

Abstract: We document that accrual‐based earnings management increased steadily from 1987 until the passage of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002, followed by a significant decline after the passage of SOX. Conversely, the level of real earnings management activities declined prior to SOX and increased significantly after the passage of SOX, suggesting that firms switched from accrual‐based to real earnings management methods after the passage of SOX. We also document that the accrual‐based earnings management activities were particularly high in the period immediately preceding SOX. Consistent with these results, we find that firms that just achieved important earnings benchmarks used less accruals and more real earnings management after SOX when compared to similar firms before SOX. In addition, our analysis provides evidence that the increases in accrual‐based earnings management in the period preceding SOX were concurrent with increases in equity‐based compensation. Our results suggest that stock‐option compo...