A claim is commonly made that cash flow and accrual accounting methods for valuing equities must always yield equivalent valuations. A recent paper by Lundholm and O'Keefe (2001), for example, claims that, because of this equivalence, there is nothing to be learned from empirical comparison of...

Under accrual accounting, earnings add to shareholders' equity. Cash flow generated by a business has no effect on the book value of shareholders' equity but reduces the book value of net assets employed in business operations. In short, accrual accounting rules prescribe that earnings add to...

This paper modifies the standard returns-earnings regression in accounting research to show that financial reports convey both cash-flow news and discount-rate (expected-return) news. The paper points to the realization principle, associated as it is with the resolution of risk, as the...

Standard formulas for valuing the equity of going concerns require prediction of payoffs "to infinity" but practical analysis requires that they be predicted over finite horizons. This truncation inevitably involves (often troublesome) "terminal value" calculations. This paper contrasts dividend...