Following Leuz et al. (2002), we find the cross-sectional correlation between the change in accruals and the change in cash flows, both scaled by lagged total assets, in country i, year t. Cash flows are obtained by subtracting accruals (which were obtained in Equation (l)) from operating earnings. Because some degree of earnings smoothing is a natural outcome of any accrual ac-counting process, this measure is expected to be negative on average. However, the more neg-ative this correlation, the more likely it is that earnings smoothing is obscuring the variability in un-derlying economic performance, and the greater is the earnings opacity. The effect of earnings smoothing on the distribution of accounting earnings vis-a-vis economic earnings is depicted in the Earnings Smoothing graph of Figure 1.