外文文献翻译译文
一、外文原文
原文：
Disclosure Quality and the Mispricing of Accruals and Cash Flow
In this paper, we investigate the role that disclosure quality plays in the accurate valuation of accruals and cash flow. We predict that stock prices of firms with higher-quality disclosures more accurately reflect the persistence of accruals and cash flow. We test our predictions using analyst ratings of disclosure published in the annual Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR) Corporate Information Committee Reports for the years 1982 through 1996. The results provide
strong evidence of mispricing for the subset of firms with lowerquality disclosures and of a significant reduction in mispricing for the subset of firms with higher-quality disclosures. We confirm the results of our Mishkin tests using returns regressions that also control for investor
sophistication, analyst following, and firm life-cycle stage. Overall,our results demonstrate the mitigating effect that higher-quality disclosure has on mispricing.
Keywords: Disclosure quality,mispricing, accrual anomaly, cash flowmispricing
1. Introduction
Sloan (1996) provides evidence that investors overestimate the persistence of accruals and underestimate the persistence of cash flow. This results in mispricing— labeled the accrual anomaly—where a trading strategy designed to exploit investors’ misunderstanding of the persistence of earnings components earns significant abnormal returns. Literature extending Sloan (1996) primarily focuses on accrual overvaluation ., Xie [2001]; Thomas and Zhang [2002]; Collins, Gong, and Hribar [2003]). However, recent research suggests that research focusing on documented翻译accrual mispricing without also considering cash flow mispricing is incomplete(Desai, Rajgopal, and Venkatachalam [2004]; Yu [2007]; Barone and Magilke[2020]). Thus, in this paper, we investigate the role that disclosure quality plays in the accurate valuation of both accruals and cash flow. Specifically, we examine whether inv
estors price securities as if they better understand the information in accruals and cash flow for future earnings for firms with high disclosure quality relative to firms with low disclosure quality.
Investigating the association between disclosure quality and the mispricing of accruals and cash flow is important because it highlights the role that disclosure quality plays in helping investors to efficiently impound accounting information into prices, thus establishing a link between disclosure quality and market efficiency. As such, this study tests a conjecture in Thomas (2000) that the mispricing of earnings information may result from low-quality disclosures. Our results contribute to the literature by providing evidence that the existence of at least some market anomalies may be reduced by high-quality disclosure. Moreover,our research may provide evidence to policymakers as they weigh the costs and benefits of mandating improved disclosures.
Recent research provides evidence that temporary accounting distortions arising from accrual estimation errors plays a significant role in the lower earnings persistence of accrua
ls relative to cash flow (Richardson, Sloan, Soliman, and Tuna [2006]). These accrual estimation errors could be a result of both unintentional errors in forecasting the future economic benefits of accruals and intentional managerial manipulation (Xie [2001]; Richardson et al. [2006]). Sloan(1996) argues that investors fail to fully understand the differential persistence of accruals because they do not understand the greater subjectivity involved in estimating accruals relative to cash flow. Recent research also suggests that investors underestimate the persistence of cash flow and thus, fail to fully understand the future economic benefits of cash flow (Desai, Rajgopal, and Venkatachalam[2004]; Yu [2007]; Barone and Magilke [2020]).
Theory suggests that increased disclosure plays a role in equity markets by reducing information asymmetries, increasing liquidity, and reducing the cost of capital (Diamond and Verrecchia [1991]; Kim and Verrecchia [1994]). However,very few papers investigate the role that disclosure plays in efficient pricing. Our focus on disclosure is based on the idea that more informative disclosures allow investors to more fully understand the information in accruals and cash flow for future earnings. We conjecture that, all things equ
al, investors can better understand the managerial assumptions used to record accruals and therefore, can better forecast the future economic benefits and valuation implications of accruals when disclosure quality is higher. We also conjecture that, all things equal,investors can better understand the information in cash flow for future earnings,and thus can more accurately value cash flow, when disclosure quality is  specifically, we predict that stock prices of firms with higher-quality disclosures more accurately reflect the lower (higher) earnings persistence of accruals (cash flow) relative to firms with lower-quality disclosures.
We test our predictions using analyst ratings of disclosure quality published in the annual Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR)Corporate Information Committee Reports for the years 1982 to 1996  follow a string of accounting literature, beginning with Lang and Lundholm(1993), which uses the AIMR overall disclosure scores as an empirical measure of overall disclosure  We discuss the AIMR scores in further detail in Section 2.
Following Sloan (1996), we use the Mishkin (1983) rational expectations framework (hereafter referred to as the ‘‘Mishkin test’’) to examine whether the earnings expectations embedded in stock prices accurately reflect the differential persistence of the components of earnings ., accruals and cash flow). We first confirm that the mispricing phenomenon documented by Sloan (1996) occurs in our full sample of firms. That is, we find that investors behave as if they overestimate the persistence of accruals and underestimate the persistence of cash flow. We then repeat the Mishkin test using two subsamples of firms: High-Quality Disclosers ., firms in the top quintile of disclosure quality) and Low-Quality Disclosers ., firms in the bottom quintile of disclosure quality).2 The results of the subsample analysis reveal that the market prices accruals and cash flow differently for the different subsamples. Specifically, we find significant overpricing of accruals and underpricing of cash flow for Low-Quality , there is no evidence of mispricing of accruals and cash flow for High-Quality Disclosers. This result implies that investors better understand the information in accruals and cash flow for future earnings when disclosure quality is high.