Accruals discricionários e o erro de previsão do fluxo de caixa operacional nas empresas brasileiras de capital aberto

The objective of this study was to investigate the isolated effect of discretionary accruals on the prediction error of the operational cash flow of public brazillian companies. The methodology used in the research development was followed by three steps: a) measurement of the operating cash flow forecast error by autoregressive time series in one period (AR1); b) measurement of discretionary accruals by the model of Pae (2005); c) estimation of the effects of discretionary accruals and incentives to management of results in the error of forecasting the operational cash flow. The sample consisted of 363 public brazilian companies that had data available in the Economática database between 2008 and 2015. The results showed that timely discretionary accruals have a positive influence on the operational cash flow forecasting error, suggesting that opportunistic practices of managers may impair the informational capacity of the accruals. This finding suggests that users of accounting information, especially market analysts who emit cash flow forecasts, should take into account the discretionary effect of discretionary accruals in relation to total accumulations in the margin of error of the cash flow forecast.