We find that CEOs issue significantly more favorable management earnings forecasts (MEFs), relative to the prevailing analyst consensus, to boost stock prices when approaching performance evaluation end dates. The effect is more pronounced for firms with lower past stock returns and when award...

We study the effects of the predictability in stock returns for the fair value of American Executive Stock Options (ESOs). By assuming a trending Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process for stock returns, we solve for the executive's optimal exercise policy using a methodology based on the least-squares...

We provide evidence of unreported trading by corporate insiders in their own firm's shares and link this activity to future firm earnings and analyst forecast error. Unreported trading are cases of discrepancies between insider shareholdings from trades reported to the Exchange and their...

We provide evidence of unreported trading by corporate insiders in their own firm's shares and link this activity to future firm earnings and analyst forecast error. Unreported trading represent discrepancies between insider shareholdings from trades they report to the Exchange and their...

The state of the art in the analyst forecasting literature is that analyst earnings forecast ability is only firm-specific (Chen, Francis, and Jiang (2005); Chen and Jiang (2006)). This view is based on Park and Stice's (2000) finding of the absence of a “spillover” effect, i.e., investors...

We investigate the extent to which market participants use compensation payouts released in the DEF 14A proxy statement (DEF14A) to assess future firm performance by examining sell-side analysts' earnings forecasts. Consistent with prior work, we confirm that CEO compensation unexplained by...

While brokerage houses use both teams of sell-side analysts and individual analysts to conduct earnings research, there is no empirical research examining if teams and individuals differ with regard to their forecasting performance or purpose, and if so, how and why. We first examine the...

We investigate the extent to which market participants use compensation payouts released in the DEF 14A proxy statement (DEF14A) to assess future firm performance by examining sell-side analysts' earnings forecasts. Consistent with prior work, we confirm that CEO compensation unexplained by...

This paper examines the relation between firm-level implied volatility skew and the likelihood of extreme negative events, or crash risk. I show that volatility skew identifies which firms are likely to experience crashes, but only in short-window earnings announcement periods. The predictive...

Financial institutions and academic researchers utilize bankruptcy prediction models to assess distress risk. However, predicting default can be problematic since (i) few firms actually experience default in any one year, (ii) the lag between practical and actual default can vary significantly,...