IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jaecon/v51y2011i3p219-239.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of cash flow forecasts on accrual quality and benchmark beating

Author

Listed:
  • McInnis, John
  • Collins, Daniel W.

Abstract

When analysts provide forecasts of both earnings and operating cash flow, they also implicitly provide a forecast of total operating accruals. We posit that this increases the transparency and the expected costs of accrual manipulations used to manage earnings. As a consequence, we predict and find that accrual quality improves and firms' propensity to meet or beat earnings benchmarks declines following the provision of cash flow forecasts. We also predict and find that firms turn to other benchmark-beating mechanisms, such as real activities manipulation and earnings guidance in response to the provision of cash flow forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • McInnis, John & Collins, Daniel W., 2011. "The effect of cash flow forecasts on accrual quality and benchmark beating," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 219-239, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:51:y:2011:i:3:p:219-239
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-4101(10)00045-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles E. Wasley & Joanna Shuang Wu, 2006. "Why Do Managers Voluntarily Issue Cash Flow Forecasts?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 389-429, May.
    2. Patricia M. Dechow & Richard G. Sloan & Amy P. Sweeney, 1996. "Causes and Consequences of Earnings Manipulation: An Analysis of Firms Subject to Enforcement Actions by the SEC," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(1), pages 1-36, March.
    3. Degeorge, Francois & Patel, Jayendu & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1999. "Earnings Management to Exceed Thresholds," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-33, January.
    4. Roychowdhury, Sugata, 2006. "Earnings management through real activities manipulation," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 335-370, December.
    5. Christopher S. Armstrong & Alan D. Jagolinzer & David F. Larcker, 2010. "Chief Executive Officer Equity Incentives and Accounting Irregularities," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(2), pages 225-271, May.
    6. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    7. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2005. "The economic implications of corporate financial reporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-3), pages 3-73, December.
    8. Michael C. Jensen, 2005. "Agency Costs of Overvalued Equity," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 34(1), Spring.
    9. Bartov, Eli & Givoly, Dan & Hayn, Carla, 2002. "The rewards to meeting or beating earnings expectations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 173-204, June.
    10. Dechow, Patricia M., 1994. "Accounting earnings and cash flows as measures of firm performance : The role of accounting accruals," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 3-42, July.
    11. Lawrence D. Brown & Arianna Spina Pinello, 2007. "To What Extent Does the Financial Reporting Process Curb Earnings Surprise Games?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(5), pages 947-981, December.
    12. Paul Hribar & D. Craig Nichols, 2007. "The Use of Unsigned Earnings Quality Measures in Tests of Earnings Management," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(5), pages 1017-1053, December.
    13. Kothari, S.P. & Leone, Andrew J. & Wasley, Charles E., 2005. "Performance matched discretionary accrual measures," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 163-197, February.
    14. Burgstahler, David & Dichev, Ilia, 1997. "Earnings management to avoid earnings decreases and losses," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 99-126, December.
    15. Cohen, Daniel A. & Zarowin, Paul, 2010. "Accrual-based and real earnings management activities around seasoned equity offerings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 2-19, May.
    16. SANJEEV BHOJRAJ & PAUL HRIBAR & MARC PICCONI & JOHN McINNIS, 2009. "Making Sense of Cents: An Examination of Firms That Marginally Miss or Beat Analyst Forecasts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 2361-2388, October.
    17. Palmrose, Zoe-Vonna & Richardson, Vernon J. & Scholz, Susan, 2004. "Determinants of market reactions to restatement announcements," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 59-89, February.
    18. Scott Richardson & Siew Hong Teoh & Peter D. Wysocki, 2004. "The Walk†down to Beatable Analyst Forecasts: The Role of Equity Issuance and Insider Trading Incentives," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(4), pages 885-924, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dechow, Patricia & Ge, Weili & Schrand, Catherine, 2010. "Understanding earnings quality: A review of the proxies, their determinants and their consequences," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 344-401, December.
    2. Chang, Chu-Hsuan & Lin, Hsiou-Wei William, 2018. "Does there prevail momentum in earnings management for seasoned equity offering firms?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 111-129.
    3. Martin Nienhaus, 2022. "Executive equity incentives and opportunistic manager behavior: new evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 1276-1318, December.
    4. Bird, Andrew & Karolyi, Stephen A. & Ruchti, Thomas G., 2019. "Understanding the “numbers game”," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2).
    5. Griffin, Paul A. & Hong, Hyun A. & Liu, Yun & Ryou, Ji Woo, 2021. "The dark side of CEO social capital: Evidence from real earnings management and future operating performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    6. Habib, Ahsan & Hossain, Mahmud, 2008. "Do managers manage earnings to ‘just meet or beat’ analyst forecasts?," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 79-91.
    7. Stephen J. Terry & Toni M. Whited & Anastasia A. Zakolyukina, 2020. "Information versus Investment," Working Papers 2020-110, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    8. Wenxia Ge & Jeong-Bon Kim, 2014. "Boards, takeover protection, and real earnings management," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 651-682, November.
    9. Alexandre Garel & Jose Martin-Flores & Arthur Petit-Romec & Ayesha Scott, 2021. "Institutional investor distraction and earnings management," Post-Print hal-03096196, HAL.
    10. El Diri, Malek & Lambrinoudakis, Costas & Alhadab, Mohammad, 2020. "Corporate governance and earnings management in concentrated markets," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 291-306.
    11. Fargher, Neil & Wee, Marvin, 2019. "The impact of Ball and Brown (1968) on generations of research," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 55-72.
    12. Huang, Wei & Goodell, John W. & Zhang, Hong, 2019. "Pre-merger management in developing markets: The role of earnings glamor," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    13. Inder K. Khurana & Yinghua Li & Wei Wang, 2018. "The Effects of Hedge Fund Interventions on Strategic Firm Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(9), pages 4094-4117, September.
    14. Su-Ping Liu & Juan Manuel García Lara, 2013. "Market Rewards to Patterns of Increasing Earnings: Do Cash Flow Patterns, Accruals Manipulation and Real Activities Manipulation Matter?," Working Papers 1303, Departament Empresa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, revised May 2013.
    15. Galdi, Fernando Caio & Johnson, E. Scott, 2021. "Accounting for inventory costs and real earnings management behavior," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    16. Jian Wang & Yanhuang Huang & Hongrui Feng & Xingjian Li & Shu Yan, 2023. "CEO incentive compensation and stock price momentum," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(S1), pages 975-1028, April.
    17. Manish Kumar & Madhu Vij & Rishabh Goswami, 2021. "Effect of Real Earnings Management on Firm Performance: Evidence from India," Vision, , vol. 27(3), pages 386-396, June.
    18. Hassan Espahbodi & Reza Espahbodi & Kose John & Hua Christine Xin, 2022. "Earnings management in the short- and long-term post-regulation periods," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 217-244, January.
    19. Al-Shattarat, Basiem & Hussainey, Khaled & Al-Shattarat, Wasim, 2022. "The impact of abnormal real earnings management to meet earnings benchmarks on future operating performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    20. Vincent Chen & Samuel Tiras, 2015. "‘Other information’ as an explanatory factor for the opposite market reactions to earnings surprises," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 45(4), pages 757-784, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:51:y:2011:i:3:p:219-239. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jae .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.