Corporate financing changes: consequencies for discretionary accruals estimation

This study discusses the impact of financing changes on accruals models and discretionary accruals estimates. It pursues a threefold objective. Firstly, to show analytically how the occurrence of such changes affects discretionary accruals estimation. Secondly, to analyse empirically whether different accruals models (Jones, (1991); Dechow and Dichev, (2002); and McNichols,(2002) reflect in a similar way the impact of changes in corporate financing. Thirdly, to test an existent solution in literature to mitigate the problem caused by financing changes on discretionary accruals estimates. Empirical evidence shows that the measurement error induced by not well-specified accruals models is affected by the sign of financing changes, being different for positive and negative changes; all models reflect in a similar way the impact of changes in corporate financing and, for the Portuguese context, the matched-firm approach on financing changes used by Shan et al. (2010) to mitigate the problem caused by financing changes on discretionary accruals doesn’t work well.