How Do Amounts, Composition, and Quality of Accruals Differ for Physical versus Knowledge Firms?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Iqbal, Aneel; Srivastava, Anup
• 署名单位: Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Downtown Phoenix; University of Calgary
• 刊物名称: ACCOUNTING REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-4826; 1558-7967
• DOI: 10.2308/TAR-2024-0165
• 发表日期: 2026-07
• 页码: 295-319
• 关键词: accruals; Intangibles; accounting estimates; earnings quality; timing roles; accrual quality; Summary measure; ACCOUNTING EARNINGS; Cash flows; performance; persistence

摘要

We examine whether accrual accounting loses relevance with the rise of knowledge firms. Investigating a large sample of U.S. firms from 1990 to 2022, we compare magnitudes, components, quality, and pricing of accruals across knowledge-and physical-asset firms. Knowledge firms report lower accruals and poorer accrual quality, but the gap is concentrated in small knowledge firms. Their low-quality accruals reflect largely innate, volatile, uncertain, early-stage operations, not discretionary reporting. As these firms scale, their accrual magnitudes and quality converge to those of similarly sized physical firms. These life-cycle dynamics reconcile the 1990s decline and post-2000 improvement in aggregate accrual quality through offsetting new-list and maturation effects. Accrual accounting remains decision-useful in a knowledge economy, as the market prices, and thus seems to recognize, the information risk emanating from poor accrual quality, especially for knowledge firms.