Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize that firms rationally adjust their investment to respond to discount rate changes. Consistent with the optimal investment hypothesis, we document that (i) the predictive power of accruals for future stock returns increases with...

Past research has shown that the level of operating accruals is a negative cross-sectional predictor of stock returns. This paper examines whether the accrual anomaly extends to the aggregate stock market. In contrast with cross-sectional findings, there is no indication that aggregate operating...

Studies of accounting information value relevance are often based on the scale of R2 value. However, Insukindro (1998) states that a high R2 coefficient does not imply that a model is superior. When linear regression estimation produces a high coefficient of R2 but it is not consistent with the...

High growth service firms invest resources to acquire and retain customers, creating intangible assets. This paper tests whether investors use customer metrics to value these firms. Using a unique handcollected data set, we show that investors discount the values of high growth service firms if...

We construct accounting-based costs of equity for dollar neutral long-short trading strategies formed on a comprehensive list of anomaly variables. These variables include book-to-market, size, composite issuance, net stock issues, abnormal investment, asset growth, investment-to-assets,...

Standard equity valuation approaches (i.e., DDM, RIM, and DCF model) are derived under the assumption of ideal conditions, such as infinite payoffs and clean surplus accounting. Because these conditions are hardly ever met, we extend the standard approaches, based on the fundamental principle of...

In terms of corporate valuation, the frequently used heuristics are Price Earnings or Price Earnings to Growth ratios. The development of a valuation model of type Abnormal Earnings Growth Model including modeling of expected rents evolution, conditions compatible with perfect competition,...

We outline a systematic approach to incorporate macroeconomic information into firm level forecasting from the perspective of an equity investor. Using a global sample of 198,315 firm-years over the 1998–2010 time period, we find that combining firm level exposures to countries (via geographic...

We develop and implement a rigorous analytical framework for empirically evaluating the relative performance of firm-level expected-return proxies (ERPs). We show that superior proxies should closely track true expected returns both cross-sectionally and over time (that is, the proxies should...