The literature on ‘cash flow' or ‘earnings' beta is theoretically well-motivated in its use of fundamentals, instead of returns, to measure systematic risk. However, empirical measures of earnings beta based on either log-linearizing the return equation or log-linearizing the clean-surplus...

Using monthly and quarterly cross-sectional dispersion in firm level earnings news as a proxy for investor uncertainty about the implications of current aggregate earnings for future discount rates, I find that higher investor uncertainty leads to a lower stock market reaction to aggregate...