中文2194字外文翻译原文：Disclosure Quality and Cash FlowWe study a relatively recent change in voluntary disclosure practices by management, namely the issuance of management cash flow forecasts. While we find some management cash flow forecasts in the early 1980s, the incidence of such disclosures is low until recent years. However, since 2000, there has been a dramatic increase in the issuance of management cash flow forecasts and the number of such forecasts has more than tripled from pre-2000 levels.One potential explanation for this trend is Regulation FD, which went into effect in 2000. For example, if managers were disclosing cash flow forecasts privately to analysts prior to Regulation FD, they would have to publicly disclose such forecasts to all parties after Regulation FD or curtail their management cash flow forecasts completely. Regulation FD potentially increases company disclosure of a wide array of financial information, including cash flow information. Consistent with this, we also document an increasing frequency of management earnings forecasts in recent years.Another potential explanation for the recent trend of more management cash flow forecasts is investors and analysts paying more attention to cash flow information than before. Recent corporate scandals involving Enron, WorldCom and others, have heightened investor concern over potential accounting earnings manipulations. Such concerns were recently noted in a Business Week article entitled “Fuzzy Numbers”.Consistent with an increase in the demand for cash flow information by investors, we also find analyst forecasts of cash flow during the 2000-2003 period more than doubled from pre-2000 levels.We study voluntary management cash flow forecasts and test hypotheses on managers’incentives to issue these forecasts. Prior voluntary disclosure literatureoffers varying predictions for management’s incentives to provide disclosure as well as the nature of information conveyed in management disclosures. For example, theoretical models demonstrate that when there are proprietary costs of disclosure or when investors are uncertain about the information management has, firms will voluntarily disclose good news and withhold less favorable news. Early empirical studies on management earnings forecasts provide evidence consistent with this prediction. More recent empirical work, however, suggests the importance of litigation risk in affecting management earnings forecasts. Skinner[1994] and Kasznik and Lev[1995] document that management earnings forecasts are more likely to convey bad news, consistent with managers are concerned with the risk of litigation and issue preemptive earnings forecasts to adjust downward investor expectations.Earnings forecasts likely play a special role in reducing the risk of litigation, and a more important role than management cash flow forecasts. For firms with bad news and thus concerned about potential litigation, earnings-related disclosures are likely to be more effective in conveying that bad news to investors than disclosures of other financial information such as cash flows because, in general, earnings is the most informative summary performance measure. Thus, earnings disclosure is more likely to bring about the needed adjustment to investor expectations. As a result, the propensity for earnings forecasts to reflect bad news as documented in some of the prior studies may not apply to other types of management forecasts such as cash flow forecasts. Consistent with this, using data since the 1980’s, researchers find that better performance is associated with higher overall disclosure levels.We predict that management issues cash flow forecasts to signal good news in cash flow, to meet investor demand for cash flow information, and to pre-commit to a certain composition of earnings in terms of cash flow versus accruals, thus reducing the degree of freedom in earnings management. Our findings are consistent with these predictions. We find that the likelihood of management cash flow forecasts increases in periods when there is a large increase in operating cash flow, when analysts are forecasting an earnings loss, when management specifically reveals in their press releases that earnings will be either below or above expectations and when firm isyoung. In addition, we find that the likelihood of management cash flow forecasts decreases in periods with extreme positive discretionary accruals.We document that firms issuing management cash flow forecasts tend to have better cash flow information than those without a forecast and that management cash flow forecasts tend to beat existing expectations. This applies to situations where there is very bad or very good news in earnings and when the firm is young, suggesting that management uses cash flow forecasts to mitigate the negative impact of bad news in earnings, to lend credibility to good news in earnings and to signal economic viability in young firms.We provide evidence on how management reports actual cash flow information in (subsequent) press releases. We document that managers use discretion in reporting realized cash flows in earnings announcement-related press releases and adopt alternative definitions of cash flows (vis-à-vis GAAP definitions of cash flow per the statement of cash flows). Specifically, management-announced actual cash flows tend to exceed actual GAAP cash flows. As a result, management-announced actual cash flows meet or beat management cash flow projections more often than actual GAAP cash flows meet or beat management projections, generating significantly positive cash flow forecast errors. This finding suggests that a similar practice to management’s announcement of pro forma earnings also exists for management announcement of cash flows.Sloan (1996) provides evidence that investors overestimate the persistence of accruals and underestimate the persistence of cash flow. This results in mispricing –labeled the accrual anomaly –where a trading strategy designed to exploit investors’ misunderstanding of the persistence of earnings components earns significant abnormal returns. Literature extending Sloan (1996) primarily focuses on accrual overvaluation (e.g., Xie [2001]; Thomas & Zhang [2002]; Collins, Gong, & Hribar [2003]). However, recent research suggests that research focusing on accrual mispricing without also considering cash flow mispricing is incomplete (Desai, Rajgopal, & Venkatachalam [2004]; Yu [2007]; Barone & Magilke [2008]). Thus, in this paper, we investigate the role that disclosure quality plays in the accuratevaluation of both accruals and cash flow. Specifically, we examine whether investors price securities as if they better understand the information in accruals and cash flow for future earnings for firms with high disclosure quality relative to firms with low disclosure quality.Investigating the association between disclosure quality and the mispricing of accruals and cash flow is important because it highlights the role that disclosure quality plays in helping investors to efficiently impound accounting information into prices, thus establishing a link between disclosure quality and market efficiency. As such, this study tests a conjecture in Thomas (2000) that the mispricing of earnings information may result from low-quality disclosures. Our results contribute to the literature by providing evidence that the existence of at least some market anomalies may be reduced by high quality disclosure. Moreover, our research may provide evidence to policy makers as they weigh the costs and benefits of mandating improved disclosures.Recent research provides evidence that temporary accounting distortions arising from accrual estimation errors plays a significant role in the lower earnings persistence of accruals relative to cash flow (Richardson, Sloan, Soliman, & Tuna [2006]). These accrual estimation errors could be a result of both unintentional errors in forecasting the future economic benefits of accruals and intentional managerial manipulation (Xie [2001]; Richardson, Sloan, Soliman, & Tuna [2006]). Sloan (1996) argues that investors fail to fully understand the differential persistence of accruals because they do not understand the greater subjectivity involved in estimating accruals relative to cash flow. Recent research also suggests that investors underestimate the persistence of cash flow and thus, fail to fully understand the future economic benefits of cash flow (Desai, Rajgopal, & Venkatachalam [2004]; Yu [2007]; Barone & Magilke [2008]).Theory suggests that increased disclosure plays a role in equity markets by reducing information asymmetries, increasing liquidity, and reducing the cost of capital (Diamond & Verrecchia [1991]; Kim & Verrecchia [1994]). However, very few papers investigate the role that disclosure plays in efficient pricing. Our focuson disclosure is based on the idea that more informative disclosures allow investors to more fully understand the information in accruals and cash flow for future earnings. We conjecture that, all things equal, investors can better understand the managerial assumptions used to record accruals and therefore, can better forecast the future economic benefits and valuation implications of accruals when disclosure quality is higher. We also conjecture that, all things equal, investors can better understand the information in cash flow for future earnings, and thus can more accurately value cash flow, when disclosure quality is higher. More specifically, we predict that stock prices of firms with higher-quality disclosures more accurately reflect the lower (higher) earnings persistence of accruals (cash flow) relative to firms with lower-quality disclosures.Following Sloan (1996), we use the Mishkin (1983) rational expectations framework (hereafter referred to as the “Mishkin test”) to examine whether t he earnings expectations embedded in stock prices accurately reflect the differential persistence of the components of earnings (i.e., accruals and cash flow). We first confirm that the mispricing phenomenon documented by Sloan (1996) occurs in our full sample of firms. That is, we find that investors behave as if they over-estimate the persistence of accruals and under-estimate the persistence of cash flow. We then repeat the Mishkin test using two sub-samples of firms: High-Quality Disclosers (i.e., firms in the top quintile of disclosure quality) and Low-Quality Disclosers (i.e., firms in the bottom quintile of disclosure quality). The results of the sub-sample analysis reveal that the market prices accruals and cash flow differently for the different sub-samples. Specifically, we find significant overpricing of accruals and underpricing of cash flow for Low-Quality Disclosers. However, there is no evidence of mispricing of accruals and cash flow for High-Quality Disclosers. This result implies that investors better understand the information in accruals and cash flow for future earnings when disclosure quality is high.Following prior literature (e.g., Collins, Gong, & Hribar [2003]; Desai, Rajgopal, & Venkatachalam [2004]; Mashruwala, Rajgopal, & Shevlin [2006]; Barone & Magilke [2008]), we use a cross-sectional regression approach to investigate whetheraccruals and cash flow are associated with future returns after controlling for variables known to predict future returns (i.e., size, book-to-market). Consistent with recent research, in our full sample, we find no evidence that accruals are associated with future returns when cash flow and the control variables are included in the model (Desai, Rajgopal, & Venkatachalam [2004]; Yu [2007]; Barone & Magilke [2008]). However, we do find evidence that is consistent with the existence of cash flow mispricing (Desai, Rajgopal, & Venkatachalam [2004]; Yu [2007]; Barone & Magilke [2008]).This study investigates the relationship between disclosure quality and the mispricing of the components of earnings (i.e., accruals and cash flow). Our results provide useful information to regulators, academics, and investors interested in the pricing of earnings components. Specifically, we illustrate a potential benefit of better quality disclosure by documenting a specific case in which higher-quality disclosure is associated with more efficient prices. The results of this study are also relevant to the stream of recent academic research investigating the determinants of accrual and cash flow mispricing.Source:Michael S. Drake,James N. Myers and Linda A. Myers,2008“disclosure quality and cash flow”,August.pp.2-4.译文：信息披露质量和现金流本文研究自愿性信息披露管理实践方面的最新变化，即现金流量预测管理的发布。