We begin with a definition of “earnings quality” that sets the scope of our review. Higher
quality earnings more faithfully represent the features of the firm’s fundamental earnings process
that are relevant to a specific decision made by a specific decision-maker. Our definition implies
that the term “earnings quality” is meaningless without specifying the decision context, because the
relevant features of the firm’s fundamental earnings process differ across decisions and decision
makers. Consistent with this broad definition, we review approximately 350 published papers on
earnings.1 We do not require that the researcher use the term earnings quality.
This broad scope is motivated by the varied and often imprecise use of the term “earnings
quality” by practitioners (including regulators, enforcement agencies, and courts), the financial
press, and academic researchers. Lev (1989) popularized the adjective “quality” as a descriptive
characteristic of earnings for academic researchers when he stated that one explanation for low R2s
in earnings/returns models is that: “No serious attempt is being made to question the quality of the
reported earnings numbers prior to correlating them with returns.” Lev’s statement implicitly
suggests that he defines earnings quality as decision-usefulness in the context of equity valuation
decisions.
This use of the term “quality” is consistent with O’Glove’s practitioner-oriented financial
statement analysis textbook, Quality of Earnings, published in 1987, and even with Graham and
Dodd’s use of the term in Security Analysis, published in 1934. Graham and Dodd describe the Wall