In this paper we seek to document errors that could affect studies of earnings management. The book income adjustment (BIA) of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) created apparently strong incentives to manage book income downward in 1987. Five earlier papers using different methodologies and samples all conclude that earnings were reduced in response to the BIA. This consensus of findings offers an opportunity to investigate our speculation that methodological biases are more likely when there appear to be clear incentives for earnings management. A reexamination of these studies uncovers potential biases related to a variety of factors, including choices of scaling variables, selection of affected and control samples, and measurement error in estimated discretionary accruals. A reexamination of the argument underlying these studies also suggests that the incentives to manage earnings are less powerful than initially predicted, and are partially mitigated by tax and non-tax factors. As a result, we believe that the extent of earnings management that occurred in 1987 in response to the BIA remains an unresolved issue.

Recently, Penman and Sougiannis (1998) and Francis, Olsson, and Oswald (2000) compared the bias and accuracy of the discounted cash flow model (DCF) and Edwards‐Bell‐Ohlson residual income model (RIM) in explaining the relation between value estimates and observed stock prices. Both studies report that, with non‐price‐based terminal values, RIM outperforms DCF. Our first research objective is to explore the question whether, over a five‐year valuation horizon, DCF and RIM are empirically equivalent when Penman's (1997) theoretically “ideal” terminal value expressions are employed in each model. Using Value Line terminal stock price forecasts at the horizon to proxy for such values, we find empirical support for the prediction of equivalence between these valuation models. Thus, the apparent superiority of RIM does not hold in a level playing field comparison. Our second research objective is to demonstrate that, within each class of the DCF and RIM valuation models, the model that employs Value Line forecasted price in the terminal value expression generates the lowest prediction errors, compared with models that employ non‐price‐based terminal values under arbitrary growth assumptions. The results indicate that, for both DCF and RIM, price‐based valuation models outperform the corresponding non‐price‐based models by a wide margin. These results imply that researchers should exercise care in interpreting findings from models using ad hoc terminal value expressions.

In this paper we seek to document errors that could affect studies of earnings management. The book income adjustment (BIA) of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) created apparently strong incentives to manage book income downward in 1987. Five earlier papers using different methodologies and samples all conclude that earnings were reduced in response to the BIA. This consensus of findings offers an opportunity to investigate our speculation that methodological biases are more likely when there appear to be clear incentives for earnings management. A reexamination of these studies uncovers potential biases related to a variety of factors, including choices of scaling variables, selection of affected and control samples, and measurement error in estimated discretionary accruals. A reexamination of the argument underlying these studies also suggests that the incentives to manage earnings are less powerful than initially predicted, and are partially mitigated by tax and non‐tax factors. As a result, we believe that the extent of earnings management that occurred in 1987 in response to the BIA remains an unresolved issue.

Recently, Penman and Sougiannis (1998) and Francis, Olsson and Oswald (1999) compared the bias and accuracy of the dividend discount model (DDM), discounted cash flow model (DCF), and Edwards-Bell-Ohlson residual income model (RIM) in explaining the relation between value estimates and observed stock prices. Both studies report that, with non price-based terminal values, RIM outperforms DCF and DDM. Our primary research objective is to explore whether, over a five-year valuation horizon, DDM, DCF and RIM are empirically equivalent when Penman's (1998) theoretically terminal value expressions are employed in each model. Using Value Line terminal stock price forecasts at the horizon to proxy for such values, we find empirical support for the prediction of equivalence between these three price-based valuation models. Our secondary research objective is to demonstrate that, within each class of the DCF and RIM valuation models, the model that employs Value Line forecasted price in the terminal value expression will generate the lowest pricing errors, compared to models that employ non price-based terminal value under an arbitrary growth assumption. Results indicate that, for both DCF and RIM, price-based valuation models outperform the corresponding non price-based models by a wide margin. We also revisit the issue of the apparent superiority of RIM, and find that this result does not hold in a level playing field where an approximation of ideal terminal values is employed. In fact, the price-based RIM model is marginally outperformed by the price-based DCF and DDM models, in terms of pricing errors as well as its ability to explain current market price.