Using a sample of restatement firms and a meet-or-beat model to classify firms as
making discretionary accounting choices for opportunistic meet-or-beat (OP-MB)
reasons, we show that originally reported earnings and accrual components are less
predictive of future cash flows relative to the restated numbers. We find the opposite is
true for firms classified as making discretionary accounting choices for non-OP-MB
reasons. We consider a number of competing explanations for these latter results. Our
findings are most consistent with the informational hypothesis, weakly consistent with
conservative-motivated efficient contracting hypotheses, but inconsistent with opportunistic
contracting and misapplication/errors of GAAP explanations.