relationship with GDP growth rate. This is a surprising fact, sincethe economic growth rate goes up or down with the economy.Two things may explain this fact:- Economic growth rate in construction activity is different fromthat in other industries. Thus, the special characteristics of thisactivity may result in these firms going through different stagesas to other sectors.- Spain is a continental European country. Guenther and Young(2000) find that accounting earnings in common-law countrieswill be more closely related to real economic activity. Besides,they do not find a statistically significant relationship betweenROA and GDP growth rate in continental European countries likeGermany and France.Net output (gross added value) of construction industry canfacilitate a more accurate view of the real economic activity in thissector.1However, the net output of a particular sector does notinclude intermediate goods and services. For this reason, we havealso studied the gross output growth in real terms, that is, the sumof net output plus intermediate goods and services.Table 8 provides evidence similar to that in Table 3. That is, thereis a significant relationship not only between both net and grossoutput and ROA, but also between both net and gross output andseveral different variables. In this case, the relationship betweenreal economic activity and the main economic and financial meas-ures is stronger when used as a proxy both net and gross outputrather than GDP or housing price growth rate.The second possible motivation is studied in Table 9. We havecollected 162,100 firm-year observations of non-construction andnon-real estate firms during the study period. Both ROA and sales1In Spain, specific real estate data are not available across the whole study period.During most years they are included in Services, together with other different activ-ities.growth are positively related to GDP growth. When inflation effectsare eliminated from sales, we even find a stronger relationship withGDP growth. We must note that Guenther and Young (2000) didnot find such a relationship in two continental European countriesin a sample from 1983 to 1997. Therefore, it could be indirectlydeduced that reporting quality in Spain has improved during thestudy period.Therefore, this article reveals that, in Spain, there is an associ-ation between real economic activity and firm economic position.However, we also show that, at least when speculative bubbles, GDPgrowth rate is not a good proxy for assessing economic activity inconstruction and real estate sectors. Specificities of these industriesmean that the real changes undergone by them are not well rep-resented by a generic measure of economic activity such as GDPgrowth rate. On the contrary, the changes in the accounting vari-ables are better reflected by house price growth rate and, to an evengreater extent, by the GAV of the sector.5. ConclusionsPapers about crises and downturns have increased, due to thecurrent international situation. In Spain, the crisis is characterisedby the role played by construction activity. In fact, it is usualthat downturns worldwide are preceded by problems in housing.Accordingly, the aim of the present research is to examine the rela-tionship between several accounting measures and two differenteconomic activity proxies (GDP and house price growth rates), in asample composed of construction and real estate firms in Spain.The results indicate that although GDP growth rate may be agood proxy for economic activity when it deals with a generalsample of firms, it may not be such a good proxy for constructionand real estate firms. Instead, in general terms, the relation-ship between real housing price growth and financial accountingmeasures is significant. Furthermore, at least for construction com-panies, another finding is that insofar as the proxy for economicactivity is closer to the gross added value of the own sector, therelationship with the accounting variables is higher.However, we can observe differences between construction andreal estate companies. Although ROA is not statistically differentin both sectors, cash flow is considerably higher in constructionthan in real estate firms, whereas accruals are much higher in realestate companies. It seems that real estate companies attempt topresent high ROA during economic bonanza. Since high ROA maynot correspond with good economic conditions in real estate firms,it is not surprising that there is not a relationship between economicactivity and either cash flow or growth of sales. Faced with lowcash flow, real estate companies employed accruals, extraordinaryitems and even real earnings management to increase their profits.However, construction firms probably did not need to apply suchan aggressive policy.Regarding economic downturns, we observe firms behaving ina different manner depending on whether the crisis is ending orbeginning. When the crisis is ending (1996), the level of earn-ings management is not higher than in other years. Instead, whenthe crisis is beginning (2007), they attempt to raise income. Otherfinancial indicators such as ROA, cash flow and growth of salesindicate the magnitude of the crisis, as compared to other non-recessionary years.The results of this study allow a better understanding of thequality of financial reporting prepared by construction and realestate companies during different economic contexts. Althoughwe study two similar sectors, we show how different firms’ finan-cial position may lead to different accounting policies. Increasingleverage and persistent high accruals may be signs alerting aboutenterprises in a weak financial position. In the case of real estate