Earnings asymmetric timeliness in recognizing losses versus gains is the most commonly used measure of conditional accounting conservatism. However, this measure captures both accrual asymmetric timeliness and operating cash flow (CFO) asymmetric timeliness. Because cash flow asymmetry is not...

We examine why, as a summary statistic, earnings is better than cash flows at explaining contemporaneous returns despite being a worse predictor of future operating cash flows. Several studies compare the ability of earnings and operating cash flows to predict valuation-related outcome variables...