Putting an end to the “earnings game” requires that CEOs reclaim the initiative by avoiding earnings guidance and managing expectations in such a way that their stocks trade reasonably close to their intrinsic value. In place of earnings forecasts, management should provide information about...

Recent work in management accounting offers several novel insights into firms' cost behavior. This study explores whether financial analysts appropriately incorporate information on two types of cost behavior in predicting earnings - cost variability and cost stickiness. Since analysts'...

This paper contrasts the valuation of accounting numbers related to two classes of assets - the internally managed, fully-controlled assets versus the "significant influence" investments, that is, investments where the investing firm exercises influence, but not control, over the assets. We find...

We identify a specific organizational resource in brokerage houses—information sharing among analyst colleagues who cover economically related industries along a supply chain. We hypothesize that this resource constitutes a knowledge asset that benefits analyst research and allows analysts to...

We study how institutional investor attention to a firm affects the timeliness of analysts' forecasts for that firm. We measure abnormal institutional attention (AIA) using Bloomberg news search activity for the firm on earnings announcement days. We find that analysts issue more timely...

Despite the importance of sell-side analysts in the capital markets, we know little about the effectiveness of routine monitoring of the sell-side industry. We examine the attributes of sell-side research issued by analysts before and after their brokerage faces regulatory sanctions. We find...

Despite the prevalence and importance of humor in interpersonal communication, the disclosure literature is silent on the use of humor in the context of corporate communications. We examine analysts' and managers' use of humor during public earnings conference calls. Using a sample of nearly...

Despite the importance of sell-side analysts in the capital markets, we know little about the effectiveness of routine monitoring of the sell-side industry. We examine the attributes of sell-side research issued by analysts before and after their brokerage is subject to regulatory sanctions. We...

Research on earnings conference calls documents that the question and answer (Q&A) portion is informative to market participants. However, prior studies on earnings calls focus on the attributes of managers and analysts individually. In this study, we use the interaction itself as our unit of...

We examine whether lenders use analyst forecasts of the borrowing firm's earnings when establishing covenant thresholds in private debt contracts. We find greater proximity between the analysts' consensus earnings forecast and the future earnings performance required by the contract among...