The nature of information in accruals and cash flows in an emerging capital market: The case of China

Our study investigates the relative and incremental information content of earnings, operating cash flows, and accruals in the emerging capital market of China. The issue is tested by regressing stock returns on the levels of earnings and their components. Based on a sample of 1516 firm-years for listed Chinese firms during 1995–1998, our results demonstrate that earnings have relative information content over operating cash flows. The autocorrelations and cross-sectional correlations also imply that earnings have greater persistence and predictability than operating cash flows. We also find that discretionary accruals provide incremental information beyond that contained in nondiscretionary accruals, consistent with the argument that discretionary accruals improve the relevance of earnings in reflecting the fundamental values of the listed Chinese firms. Unlike prior findings in the studies on developed markets, we find no strong evidence that the value attached to discretionary accruals is lower than the value attached to nondiscretionary accruals. This is consistent with the argument that managerial policy choices available for the listed Chinese firms were rather limited during our sample period under relatively uniform People's Republic of China Accounting Standards (PRC-GAAP), thus, producing fewer opportunities for earnings management. An alternative interpretation could be that Chinese investors are functionally fixated on earnings.