Disappearing investment‐cash flow sensitivities: earnings have not become a worse proxy for cash flow
According to a recent conjecture in the literature, earnings have become a poorer proxy for cash flow from operations over time. We find that since 1988, when cash flow statements started to be consistently reported in Compustat, the cash effectiveness of earnings has actually increased for a large sample of U.S. manufacturing firms. This occurs despite the introduction of fair value accounting an