This paper examines the relationship between idiosyncratic risk and stock returns in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries by applying parametric and nonparametric approaches. It also explores the idiosyncratic risk puzzle by dividing firms into groups based on...

We build a macroeconomic model for Switzerland, the Euro Area, and the USA that drives the dynamics of several asset classes and the liabilities of a representative Swiss (defined-contribution) pension fund. This encompassing approach allows us to generate correlations between returns on assets...

In this paper, we document evidence that downside betas tend to comove more than upside betas during a financial crisis, but upside betas tend to comove more than the downside betas during financial booms. We find that the asymmetry between Downside-Beta Comovement and Upside-Beta Comovement is...

Many studies have documented that analyst forecasts are overly-optimistic on average. Using quarterly observations from 1984 to 2002, this paper shows that forecasts exhibit optimism for most of the quarters under examination, but the level of optimism varies substantially over time. More...

Using detailed information on establishments owned by U.S. public firms, we construct a novel measure of geographic linkage between firms. We show that the returns of geography-linked firms have strong predictive power for focal firm returns and fundamentals. A long-short strategy based on this...

This study focuses on the impact of model estimation methods on earnings forecast accuracy. Compared with an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression combined with winsorization, robust regression MM-estimation improves the earnings forecast accuracy of all the models examined, especially for...

This study presents evidence suggesting that investors do not fully unravel predictable pessimism in sell-side analysts' earnings forecasts. We show that measures of prior consensus and individual analyst forecast pessimism are predictive of both the sign of firms' earnings surprises and the...

Identifying firms linked economically through the comovement of the credit rating of their corporate bonds, we find that a long-short strategy for stocks based on the link generates a risk-adjusted alpha of 0.62 percent per month, which cannot be explained by industry, customer-supplier, single-...

As supply chain channels physical, financial, and information flows as well as associated risks, a firm’s supply chain information should be helpful in understanding and predicting its credit risks. Credit ratings as an approximate but important measure of corporate credit risks have been...

We use machine learning techniques to conduct out-of-sample predictions of the underpricing of U.S. initial public offerings (IPOs) from 1990 to 2019. Using predicted underpricing based on ex ante information to sort the IPOs into 10 groups, we find that the underpricing averages for the top and...