an empirical evaluation of the usefulness of non-gaap accounting measures in the real estate investment trust industry, review of accounting studies（实证评估非一般公认会计准则的会计措施的有效性在房地产投资信托基金行业,会计研究）.pdf

Review of Accounting Studies, 3, 103–130 (1998) c 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston. Manufactured in The Netherlands. An Empirical Evaluation of the Usefulness of Non-GAAP Accounting Measures in the Real Estate Investment Trust Industry THOMAS D. FIELDS J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston IL 60208-2002 SRINIVASAN RANGAN University of California-Davis, Davis, CA 95616-8609 S. RAMU THIAGARAJAN J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2002 Abstract. We conduct three sets of analyses to compare the usefulness of net income, based on generally accepted accounting principals (GAAP), and the industry-advanced funds from operations (FFO) in the context of the real estate investment trust (REIT) industry. In our first set of tests, we find that FFO is more strongly associated with one-year ahead FFO and one-year ahead operating cash flows than is net income. Conversely, we find that net income explains more variation in one-year ahead net income and current stock price than does FFO. Second, in support of the claim that some REITs manipulate FFO, we document that young REITs and REITs that are likely to access capital markets are more likely to manage FFO. Third, we find that, for a sample of firms that disclose current value information, both net income and FFO fail to reflect holding gains or losses on unsold properties in a timely manner. Overall, our analyses suggest that the REIT industry’s claim that FFO is more useful than net income is premature because the superiority of one measure over the other is highly contextual. For several years, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and security analysts have questioned the usefulness of net income for investors’ decisions (Edmunds, 1982; National Association of Real Estate Inves