中文摘要：

企业是一个不断演进的实体，而演进的路径和速度决定于内部因素和外部因素，尤其是企业的经营决策，在不同的阶段有明显的差别。现有研究忽略了企业经营决策对于应计行为的重要影响，本文的结果表明。经营决策的变化和经营的结果直接决定了应计的演进，企业生命周期对于应计的决定具有重要作用。与此同时，在中国的上市公司中，处于不同生命周期的企业，其财务和会计特征都呈现出系统的、有规律的变化。本文的研究结果也表明基于现金流组合特征的生命周期代理变量，能够合理区分中国上市公司所处的不同发展阶段，具有简洁、实用、适合于大样本研究的特点。

英文摘要：

Business firms are evolving entities, and the path and rate of evolution are determined both by internal and external factors. The operating decisions of enterprises have obvious differences in their different phases. Existing studies neglect the important effect of enterprise decision making on accruals. Our results indicate that, the change of operating decisions and the performance results directly determines the evolution of accruals. Meanwhile, for listed companies in China, their financial and accounting characteristics show systemic variation in different phases of life cycle. The research results show that proxy based on cash flow portfolio can reasonably classify different phases of Chinese listed firms. It is concise and practical, and can be applies to large-sample studies.