Finally, our broad-sample evidence supports the view that the capital market
consequences of differences in accruals quality arise because accruals quality proxies
for information risk, a risk factor that cannot be diversified away in equilibrium
(Easley and O’Hara, 2004; O’Hara, 2003; Leuz and Verrecchia, 2004). In contrast to
other firm characteristics that have been shown by prior research to empirically
predict cross-sectional differences in costs of capital, notably size and the book-tomarket
ratio, accruals quality maps into a theoretically grounded cost of capital
determinant: information risk