We present evidence of the impact of buy-side analysts on the behavior and performance of fund managers. Using data provided by a large global asset manager, we relate buy-side analysts' recommendations to fund transactions on a daily basis. Our results show that buy-side analysts have a...

Asymmetric persistence of accounting income is often tested in a regression of changes in earnings on lagged changes in earnings, including an interaction term for negative changes (see Basu [1997] or Ball et al. [2009] for a recent overview). In this note we propose an alternative, but closely...

Section 340f of the German Commercial Code allows banks to provision against the special risks inherent to the banking business by building hidden reserves. Beyond risk provisioning, these reserves are implicitly accepted as an earnings management device. By analyzing financial statements of...

Asymmetric persistence of accounting income is often tested in a regression of changes in earnings on lagged changes in earnings, including an interaction term for negative changes (see Basu [1997] or Ball et al. [2009] for a recent overview). In this note we propose an alternative, but closely...

Much attention has been paid to the large decreases in value of non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) during the financial crisis. Many observers have argued that the fall in prices was partly driven by decreased liquidity and fire sales. We investigate whether capital...

We examine how equity-market frictions that restrict pessimistic trading, such as short-sale constraints, affect assessments of default risk. We find that these frictions decrease the usefulness of equity-market variables for identifying defaulting firms but increase their usefulness for...

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...

This paper uses analysts' forecasts to estimate a share's equity duration, a measure of a company's average cash-flow maturity. We find that short duration equity is associated with high expected and realized returns, which cannot be attributed to the shares' systematic risk exposure as implied...

Under semi-strong market efficiency future returns are unpredictable from previously released information. We test the degree of semi-strong form market efficiency in the credit default swap (CDS) market by examining the relationship between subsequent CDS returns and previously announced...

The recent financial scandals, backdating problems, expensing of options and increasing use of restricted stocks have affected the cash dividend payout policies of firms, especially of those issuing restricted stocks. This research examines the accounting, financial and demographic variables...