Accounting Conservatism and the Temporal Trends in Current Earnings’ Ability to Predict Future Cash Flows versus Future Earnings: Evidence on the Trade‐off between Relevance and Reliability
研究发现1973-2005年间会计稳健性增强导致当前盈余预测未来现金流的能力上升，但预测未来盈余的能力下降，且盈余对股价的解释力与可靠性正相关，与相关性无关，表明相关性与可靠性存在权衡。
This research reports that an increasing level of accounting conservatism over the 1973–2005 period is associated with: (1) an increase in the ability of current earnings to predict future cash flows and (2) a decrease in the ability of current earnings to predict future earnings. We also find that usefulness of earnings for explaining stock prices over book values is positively related to reliability but not to relevance. Our results hold for the constant and full samples in both in‐sample and out‐of‐sample analyses and are robust to the use of alternative measures for relevance, reliability, earnings usefulness, and conservatism. Our findings about the relations among conservatism, relevance, reliability, and usefulness suggest a trade‐off between relevance and reliability and seem to indicate that the adoption of an increasing number of conservative accounting standards has a possible adverse impact on earnings usefulness through a negative effect on reliability.