Therefore, because accruals are estimates of future cash flows,
earnings will be more representative of future cash flows if accruals are of good
quality. Moreover, to ensure that our measure of accruals quality is a good
proxy for accounting quality
in the sense of estimating future cash flows, we
tested for the predictability of future cash flows according to different levels of
accruals quality, and we found lower predictability of future cash flows for
firms with poor accruals quality, which confirms the validity of our variable.
These results are reported in detail in Section 5.