We find a positive association between short-selling and accruals during 1988-2009, and that asymmetry between the long and short sides of the accrual anomaly is stronger when constraints on short-arbitrage are more severe (low availability of loanable shares as proxied by institutional...

This paper examines the effect of income smoothing on information uncertainty, stock returns, and cost of equity. I show that income smoothing through both total accruals and discretionary accruals tends to reduce firms' information uncertainty, as measured by stock return volatility, analyst...

Many recent studies explore how earnings properties such as opacity, conservatism, and comparability relate to stock price crash risk. Motivated by the importance of earnings guidance as a voluntary disclosure mechanism that directly provides new information to the market, we investigate how...

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 find that analysts are more likely to downgrade stocks when prices approach the 52-week high. The results are stronger for stocks with higher information asymmetry but moderated by analysts' reputation, work experience, and educational background. We also find a strategy that shorts stocks...

In this paper I develop a noisy-rational-expectations model with a risk-neutral market maker and speculators who display prospect theory-inspired preferences and who can acquire private information about a public announcement prior to its release. Private information acquisition decreases the...

Distorted prices misguide managerial incentives and resource allocation. Distorted prices may occur when firms' stock prices are near their 52-week highs because investors tend to perceive the stocks as relatively overvalued and are reluctant to bid prices higher even if new information warrants...

This paper reviews the literature examining how costs of monitoring for, acquiring, and analyzing firm disclosures – collectively, “disclosure processing costs” – affect investor information choices, trades, and market outcomes. The existence of disclosure processing costs means that...

Does good news cover bad news? We show evidence from the Chinese stock market in which the fiscal year of a firm is always the same as the calendar year. Listed firms are required to announce their annual reports by the end of April, the same date of the deadline for announcements of first...

This paper studies the role of voluntary disclosure in crowding out independent research about firm value. In the model, when inside firm owners make it easier for outside investors to obtain inexpensive biased information from the manager, then investors rely less on costly unbiased research....