Our tiiird earnings smoothing metric is based on the Spear man correlation between accruals and cash flows. As with the two variability metrics based on equations (1) and (2), we compare correlations of residuals from equations (3) and (4), CF* and ACC*, rather than correlations between C,F and ACC directly. ACC is NI minus CF. As with the equations (1) and (2), both CF and ACC are regressed on the control variables, but excluding CF: