It is well documented that accounting measures of investment, such as working capital and capital expenditures, negatively predict future stock returns. The earnings fixation hypothesis suggests that investors overestimate and overvalue the persistence of the accrual component of earnings. Another stream of the literature argues that since accruals capture growth, the accruals anomaly can be explained by the investment anomaly, which finds that firms that grow their assets tend to have lower future returns. As empirical proxies for accruals and investment are either positively correlated or interchangeably used, it is difficult to distinguish between the competing hypotheses in empirical tests. This study contributes to the debate by identifying two special economic settings in which the two explanations offer diverging predictions. First, investment in research and development (R&D) represents an investment expenditure that reduces earnings but is not subject to accrual accounting. Thus, the earnings fixation hypothesis predicts a positive relation between increases in R&D investments and future returns, whereas the investment anomaly predicts a negative relation. Second, firms operating with negative working capital have working capital accruals that are negatively correlated with other forms of investment and growth. Therefore, while the earnings fixation hypothesis still predicts a negative relation between accruals and future returns in this setting, the investment explanation predicts a positive relation. For both sets of tests, the empirical evidence supports the earnings fixation hypothesis for the accruals anomaly and is inconsistent with the notion that the investment anomaly subsumes earnings fixation in explaining future stock returns.

中文翻译：

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应计、投资和未来业绩

有据可查的是，投资的会计指标，例如营运资金和资本支出，会对未来的股票回报产生负面影响。收益固定假设表明投资者高估和高估了收益的应计部分的持续性。另一流的文献认为，由于应计项目捕捉增长，应计项目异常可以用投资异常来解释，投资异常发现增加资产的公司往往具有较低的未来回报。由于应计和投资的经验代理要么正相关，要么可以互换使用，因此很难区分实证检验中的竞争假设。这项研究通过确定两种特殊的经济环境来推动辩论，其中两种解释提供了不同的预测。第一的，研究与开发 (R&D) 投资是指减少收益但不适用权责发生制会计的投资支出。因此，收益固定假设预测研发投资增加与未来回报之间存在正相关关系，而投资异常预测则为负相关。其次，以负营运资本运营的公司的营运资本应计与其他形式的投资和增长呈负相关。因此，虽然收益固定假设仍然预测在这种情况下应计费用与未来回报之间存在负相关关系，但投资解释预测存在正相关关系。对于两组测试，