According to the neoclassical theory of investment, if firms’ accruals are a form of short-term investment they should be greatly influenced by the shadow price of capital, namely Tobin’s q. In the presence of financial market imperfections, cash-flows should also impact accruals since they...

We formulate well-known discretionary accruals models in an investment setting. Given that accruals basically consist of short-term investment, we introduce, (i) cash-flows, as a proxy for financial constraints and other financial markets imperfections, and (ii) Tobin’s q as a measure of...

Following Zhang (Accounting Review, 2007) we cast firm accruals in terms of short-term investment. Since many studies consider accruals as a smoothed measure of cash flows, we first adopt Zhang specification and augment the standard Jones model with a cash-flow variable. Second, if accruals are...