We examine the implications of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) for financial statement comparability. We posit that the increased difficulty of estimating future cash flows and the increased opportunity for earnings management with increased EPU reduce the quality of earnings and its comparability. Consistent with this reasoning, we find a negative relation between earnings comparability and lagged EPU. Further, the association between EPU and comparability is more negative for firms that have poorer accruals quality and higher earnings volatility. We do not find that accounting policy choice is systematically related to the association between EPU and comparability. These results suggest that cross-sectional differences in accounting estimates rather than accounting policies influence the relation between EPU and comparability.

我们研究了经济政策不确定性（EPU）对财务报表可比性的影响。我们认为，估计未来现金流量的难度越来越大，而随着EPU的增加，收益管理的机会也越来越多，这会降低收益的质量及其可比性。与此推理相符，我们发现收益可比性与落后的EPU之间存在负相关关系。此外，对于应计质量较差，收益波动较大的公司，EPU与可比性之间的联系更为不利。我们没有发现会计政策的选择与EPU和可比性之间的关联系统地相关。这些结果表明，会计估计而不是会计政策的横截面差异会影响EPU和可比性之间的关系。