Our second earnings smoothing metric is based on the mean ratio of the variability of the change in net income, AJV/, to the variability of the change in operating cash flows, ACF. Firms with more volatile cash flows typically have more volatile net income, and our second metric attempts to control for this. If firms use accruals to manage earnings, the variability of the change in net income should be lower than that of operating cash flows. As with ANT, ACF is likely to be sensitive to a variety of factors un attributable to the financial reporting system. Therefore, we also estimate an equation similar to equation (1), but with ACF as the dependent variable;