Fields of Study
Major Field: Accounting and Management Information Systems
5. Robustness Test
The results from previous sections suggest that the implications of comparability are quite different for stock analysts and credit rating agencies; i.e., while accrual and cash flow comparability are significantly associated with analysts’ forecast properties, rating agencies’ timely downgrades for defaulting issues are related more to cash flow comparability. The contrast between the results for stock analysts and credit rating agencies implies that while both financial intermediaries benefit from the similarities in cash flows (underlying operations), accrual (accounting systems) comparability plays a greater role for stock analysts because their tasks involve forecasting earnings, per se.
The interpretation of the results for different market participants, however, is challenging due to the different sample compositions. Specifically, the sample used in credit rating agency tests consists of firms having defaults within one year from the rating dates, while the stock analyst tests cover a much broader range of firms. Since the event of default of bond issues is relatively rare, this results in a much smaller sample for rating agency analyses in terms of number of observations and number of firms. The concern then is that the results for credit rating agencies may be driven by firms’ default risk, instead of reflecting the different roles of comparability for stock analysts and credit rating agencies. In other words, the stronger (weaker) effect of cash flow (accrual)