The Quality of Analysts' Cash Flow Forecasts
研究发现分析师对现金流的预测不如对盈利的预测准确，改进速度也更慢，且与股票回报关联弱，对识别盈余管理帮助有限。
ABSTRACT: This study examines properties of analysts' cash flow forecasts and compares them to those exhibited by analysts' earnings forecasts. Our results indicate that analysts' cash flow forecasts are less accurate than analysts' earnings forecasts and improve at a slower rate during the forecast period. Further, cash flow forecasts appear to be a nai¨ve extension of analysts' earnings forecasts, thus providing limited information on expected changes in working capital. We also find that analysts' forecasts of cash flows are of limited information content and are only weakly associated with stock returns. Finally, estimating expected accruals as the difference between analysts' earnings forecasts and their cash flow forecasts does not result in a better detection of earnings management than achieved by commonly used accrual models.