The purpose of this research is finding a model that can help us predict the future cash flows of economic entities in Iran. According to the theoretical literature and prior reseaches , four models for predicting cash flows that their independent variables are; 1) Historical operating cash flows, 2) Historical accounting earnings, 3) Historical operating cash flows and accounting earnings, and 4) Operating cash flows, accounting earnings, and relevant items of historical current assets and current liabilites are taken into consideration. The predictability and accuracy of these models were tested in 40 firms, 11 groups, and a total of them (52 Samples).
The findings of this research show that; 1) predicting the future operating cash flows by using the historical operating cash flows (model 1) is impossible, 2) predicting the future operating cash flows by using the historical earnings (model 2) is meaningfully possible and the priority of earning to cash flows in predicting cash flows is confimed , 3) using historical operating acsh flows and historical earnings simultaneously , (model 3) improved the prediction of model, 4) using historical operating cash flows, historical earnings, relevant items of historical current assets and current liabilities simultaneously (model 4) improved the prediction of model, and 5) From the point of prediction error percentage reduction, in firm levels, model 4 is a more appropriate models for predicting operating cash flows.
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