The performance of analysts’ forecasts has attracted increasing attention in recent years. However, as yet, no empirical study has investigated the nexus between the analyst forecast dispersion (AFD) and excess returns surrounding stock market crashes in any depth. This paper attempts to fill...

We provide the first large-scale study of the performance of expected-return proxies (ERPs) internationally. Analyst-forecast-based ICCs are sparsely populated and not robustly associated with future returns. Earnings-model-forecast-based ICCs are well-populated, but are unreliable outside the...

Hirshleifer et al. (J. Account. Econom. 38 (2004)) and Taffler, Lu and Kausar (J. Account. Econom. 38 (2004)) document large and statistically significant abnormal returns from trading on balance sheet data and audit opinions. However, the statistical tests ignore high transactions costs,...

Using the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006, we examine the credibility of mandatory disclosure by credit rating agencies (CRAs) on managerial learning from stock prices. We find an increase in investment-price sensitivity for firms affected by the Act. Consistent with managers relying...

We analyze the earnings information and stock prices of S&P500 firms and find that investors following S&P500 stocks (i) respond more to pro forma earnings than to GAAP earnings, (ii) respond to an emphasis on pro forma earnings, and (iii) are fixated on pro forma earnings. We provide the first...

This paper examines the accruals anomaly in an agency context where managers of overvalued firms engage in various activities, including accruals-based earnings management, to sustain overvaluation. We use managerial trading to operationalize the empirical investigation, hypothesizing that...

In this paper, we apply a modified one-stage version of the Mishkin (1983) test to companies in the UK stock market in order to investigate the presence or otherwise of the accruals anomaly in UK firms' annual returns. For the period of 1990-2007, we report that there is little evidence of a...

In this study we examine the stock market's reaction to aggregate earnings news. Prior research shows that, in contrast to individual-firm earnings, a) stock markets' response to aggregate earnings surprise is negative, consistent with aggregate earnings news being predominantly informative...

Earnings management at the time of the IPO is an important issue and has captured considerable attention of academic literatures. However, there have been few studies testing earnings management in the context of market condition, and when financial intermediaries such as venture capital (VC)...