This study investigates whether financial analysts correctly weight cash flows, accruals and components of accruals in forecasting future earnings. This examination is in the spirit of Sloan (1996) who documents evidence that investors do not correctly distinguish between the cash flow and...

Prior studies find that (i) investors over-weight (or over-estimate the persistence of) past accruals and under-weight past cash flows, and (ii) analysts over-weight past accruals. We study financial analysts' and investors' assessments of the persistence of accruals and cash flows after...