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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative and incremental information content of a cash recovery‐based measure of performance, the estimated internal rate of return, vs an earnings‐based measure of performance, return on assets, in explaining firms' economic performance.

The paper uses the cash recovery rate that is based on continuous time analysis and U‐shaped cash flows to derive the estimated internal rate of return and compare it to return on assets. A cross‐sectional sample was used over a short interval (year 1993 and year 2005) and a time‐series sample (1993‐2005) to empirically examine the relative and incremental information content of the competing measures. Tobin's q and stock returns are used as performance benchmarks.

The results of the empirical tests indicate that the estimated internal rate of return provides better relative and incremental information content over earnings‐based measures of performance. Specifically, the empirical evidence shows that the estimated internal rate of return is consistently positively related to Tobin's q and stock returns over all measurement intervals.

These results imply that earnings‐based performance measures are less value relevant compared to cash recovery‐based measures. There are some limitations that may apply to this study. First, the systematic measurement error in estimating the cash recovery rate may not be independent of the measurement error in the estimated internal rate of return. Second, the performance benchmarks used in the study are not free from problems. Particularly, the return on assets is influenced by firms' rate of growth and the Tobin's q is not a perfect measure of business performance. Therefore, one avenue of future research is to assess the usefulness of financial accounting data for analysts forecast. Moreover, future research may also examine the role of institutional changes in financial reporting and its effect on the quality of earnings and economic performance.

This paper presents extended research on cash recovery‐based vs earnings‐based metrics as proxies for economic return using improved research designs, larger samples and new sensitivity analyses.

Recent studies on the securities market’s differential pricing of earnings components have shown that cash flow from operations is more highly valued than total accruals and that moderate cash flow from operations has higher valuation than extreme total accruals. An interesting question that follows is whether these findings hold regarding the differential valuations of cash flow and current accruals. This study aims to extend prior research by addressing this issue in two ways. First, the authors examine the incremental information content of cash flow from operations beyond working capital from operations. Second, the authors assess the effect of extreme working capital from operations on the incremental information content of cash flow from operations. This study aims to extend prior research by addressing this issue in two ways.

This study adopts market-based accounting research to test its hypotheses and to achieve its objectives. Specifically, this study uses statistical associations between accounting data and stock returns to examine the incremental information content (value relevance) of cash flow and working capital from operations and the effect of extreme working capital from operations on the incremental information content of cash flow.

The results show that cash flow from operations is not more highly valued than current accruals (both being valued equivalently). However, moderate cash flow from operations has higher valuation than extreme current accruals (each is valued differently). Overall, these research findings indicate that cash flow becomes more important for valuation as accruals get “extreme”.

As accruals are unlikely to persist to be permanent across the years, these results can be interpreted as indicating that cash flow and accruals information are used jointly by investors, with one being more important than the other depending on the relative “extremeness” of each. Therefore, both are of value to the investor and both should be reported.

The paper contributes to the UK research on determining the preferred level of disaggregation of earnings components, i.e. operating cash flow, current accruals and non-current accruals. This would help investors to improve their investment and credit decisions.

This study implements inflation adjustments, as proposed by International Accounting Standard 15 (IAS15), to determine an inflation‐adjusted version of Economic Value Added (EVA). The relationships between the nominal (EVAnom) and inflation‐adjusted (EVAreal) versions of EVA, and market‐adjusted share returns are investigated, and compared with those of residual income, earnings and operating cash flow. Relative information content tests suggest that earnings have the strongest relationship with share returns, while the results of the incremental tests indicate that the EVAnom and EVAreal components do not provide statistically significant information content beyond that provided by residual income.

The main objective of this study is to examine the claim of economic value added (EVA) proponents about its superiority as a financial performance measure compared to five traditional performance measures, i.e. net operating profit after tax (NOPAT), cash flow from operations (OCF), earnings per share (EPS), return on capital employed (ROCE) and return on equity (ROE) in Indian manufacturing sector, and simultaneously provide its empirical evidences. To achieve this, relative and incremental information content of various performance measures and their relationship with market value added (MVA) is tested and examined.

Principal component analysis (PCA) is one of the important multivariate methods utilized in business research for data reduction, latent variable modeling, multicollinearity resolution, etc. The present sample consists of 608 firm‐year observations from the Indian manufacturing sector for the period 2000‐2007. Firstly, principal component analysis (PCA) is employed to determine the important variables that explain market value. Secondly, alongside PCA, multiple regression models (OLS) are used to examine the relative and incremental information content of EVA and traditional performance measures.

These results about PCA reveal that variables like NOPAT, OCF, ROE, ROCE and EVA have maximum influence on the market value (MVA) of the sample companies, whereas EPS has a negative loading, so, EPS is discarded for further analysis. Further, the PCA loading matrix reveals that NOPAT, OCF, ROE and ROCE outscore EVA. The regression results regarding the relative information content test reveal that NOAPT and OCF outperform EVA in explaining the market value of Indian companies. The incremental information content test shows that EVA makes a marginal contribution to information content beyond NOPAT, OCF, ROCE and ROE. Overall, these empirical results about Indian companies do not support the Stern Stewart hypothesis that EVA is superior to traditional accounting‐based measures in association with market value of the firm.

The study concludes that along with financial variables, other non‐financial variables such as employees, product quality, etc., should be considered in order to capture the unexplained variation in the market value of Indian companies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the claim of economic value added (EVA) proponents about its superiority as a corporate financial performance measure, compared to traditional performance measures in non‐financial Indian companies and provide empirical evidences.

The paper uses a sample of 873 firms‐year observations from the Indian market and applies pooled ordinary least square regression to test the relative and incremental information content of EVA and other accounting‐based measures in explaining the market value added.

The results about relative information content test reveal that NOAPT and OCF outperform EVA in explaining the market value of Indian companies. Incremental information content test shows that EVA makes a marginal contribution to information content beyond traditional performance measures such as NOPAT, OCF, EPS and RONW, etc. Overall the authors' results do not support the hypothesis that EVA is superior to traditional accounting‐based measures in association with market value of the firm.

The authors conclude that non‐financial variables such employees, product quality and community satisfaction should be considered in order to capture the unexplained variation in the market value of the firm.

Explains that Canada is currently deciding whether to harmonize with US or international accounting standards and whether to allow Canadian SEC registrants to file their financial statements using US standards, outlines previous research on the information content of US/Canadian differences and tests the relative and incremental information content of 156 interlisted firms 1996‐1998. Explains the methodology and presents the results, which suggest that there is little difference in the relative information content of the two sets of standards although each provides information incremental to the other. Concludes that investors will not be harmed either by harmonization or by allowing financial reporting under US standards.

In contrast to recent US studies, almost all prior UK studies have not supported the incremental information content of cash flow beyond earnings. In addition, to date no UK study has addressed the effect of earnings extremity on the incremental information content of cash flow and earnings whilst controlling for the extremity of cash flow. Therefore, and in order to assess the generality of recent US findings, the aim of this study is to examine the incremental information content of cash flow from operations and earnings and the effect of extreme earnings on the incremental information content of cash flow from operations in the UK firms.

Based on market‐based accounting research, this study uses statistical associations between accounting data (earnings and cash flow) and stock returns to assess/measure the incremental information content (value relevance) of cash flow and earnings and the effect of extreme earnings on the incremental information content of cash flow and earnings. The paper follows the recent methodology in this area that employs the level and change of cash flow and earnings as an estimation of their unexpected components and isolates the extreme cash flow and earnings apart from the moderate ones.

The results show that both earnings and cash flow from operations have incremental information content beyond each other. It is also found that extreme earnings lead to incremental information content for only moderate (not extreme) cash flow. These results are consistent with the findings of the recent US studies.

Overall, the findings of this study support the usefulness of using cash flow information, in addition to earnings in firm valuation by investors in the UK market, especially when earnings are extreme and cash flow is moderate. The accounting interpretation of these results, in terms of disclosure of earnings components, is discussed.

The study makes the following contributions to the incremental information content of cash flow and earnings literature in the UK. First, this study employs actual cash flow data derived from cash flow statements. Second, none of the prior UK studies shares the current research focus, which is to examine the effect of earnings extremity on the incremental information content of cash flow and earnings whilst controlling for the extremity of cash flow itself. Third, this study employs a large sample size for a more recent period.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the relative and incremental value‐relevance of a comprehensive set of accounting‐based measures of firm's performance in the emerging capital market of Egypt.

The regression models are estimated using OLS to investigate the relative and incremental value relevance of accounting‐based performance measures. The relative value relevance tests are used to examine which performance measures better explain stock returns. The study also uses the incremental value relevance tests to examine whether one of these measures provides value‐relevance data beyond that provided by another.

The results of the empirical tests indicate that relative and incremental value relevance tend to increase when moving down in the income statement, with net income having the largest relative and incremental value relevance while total sales have the lowest relative and incremental value relevance. Also, all of the accrual‐based performance measures have relative and incremental value relevance statistically higher than that of operating cash flows.

The results highlight the importance of accounting‐based performance measures in Egypt. The results shed light on the fixation on net income that is bottom line performance measure in the income statement where net income has the highest value relevance to Egyptian capital market. However, owing to relatively small sample size, given the thinness of the Egyptian capital market, these findings should be interpreted with caution.

This study presents extended research on the usefulness of accounting‐based metrics as proxies for firms' performance in Egypt as one of emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the superiority of economic value added (EVA) over the traditional accounting performance measures, i.e. earnings per share, return on assets and return on equity. For this purpose, the relative and incremental information content of EVA and accounting measures are tested by examining the relationship of these measures with stock returns.

The analysis is performed for a sample of 50 Indian companies selected from the index Nifty 50 for the period of 2008-2011. The penal regression models are applied to examine the relative and incremental information content of EVA and traditional performance measures.

The study finds that EVA has more relevant and incremental information content than accounting measures for analyzing shareholder value creation. These results confirm that EVA is better performance measure than traditional accounting measures.

The study could be further extended for the sample of other firms covering the specific industries and sectors. The calculation of EVA could be modified with respect to the adjustment in profit after tax and the calculation of cost of capital.

The study has implications for the managers who are responsible to generate the wealth of shareholders by formulating the corporate financial policies. The findings also help investors who are closely concerned with the financial health of the firm while taking their investment decisions.

The novelty of this study is that it relates total return of firm’s stock with the financial measures unlike the previous literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the incremental value relevance of cash flow from operations (CFO) given book value and earnings. It also examines the relative value relevance of earnings and CFO and changes therein between the 2008‐2009 global financial crisis (GFC) and the pre‐crisis period (PCP).

Least square regressions are estimated using modified Ohlson model to examine the research questions. Relative and incremental value relevance is examined by adjusted R² and Vuong Z statistics.

The findings suggest that CFO has value relevance incremental to book value and earnings. The findings also suggest that earnings has greater relative and incremental information content than CFO in the Australian market. The value relevance of earnings has increased and that of CFO has decreased during the GFC compared to the PCP.

This study focuses on a single country. Future studies can conduct cross‐country examination of the impact of the GFC on the value relevance of earnings and CFO.

This study contributes to the debate on the value relevance of CFO incremental to book value and earnings. It also extends the literature, showing that earnings has information content (value relevance) superior to CFO in the Australian market even during an economy‐wide exogenous shock like the one of the 2008‐2009 GFC.

This is the first known study examining the value relevance of fundamental accounting information such as earnings and CFO in the context of the 2008‐2009 GFC. It extends prior research in East Asian countries in the context of 1997 Asian financial crisis and provides evidence on the impact of a world‐wide exogenous shock on the value relevance of earnings and CFO from a relatively mature and developed country with different legal, institutional and enforcement backgrounds.