type="main" xml:id="acfi12012-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>We investigate how the market's subjective estimates of autocorrelation in quarterly earnings vary with objective time-series estimates. Our results suggest that investors increasingly underestimate the correlation as the autocorrelation level...</p>

Prior research on meeting or beating earnings expectations focuses on managers' incentives to keep stock prices inflated by avoiding negative earnings surprises. However, in certain situations, managers may be motivated to depress stock prices in order to maximize their utility. We hypothesize...