This paper studies the effects of predictability on the earnings-returns relation for individual firms and for the aggregate. We demonstrate that prices better anticipate earnings growth at the aggregate level than at the firm level, which implies that random-walk models are inappropriate for...

A principal-components analysis demonstrates that common earnings factors explain a substantial portion of rm-level earnings variation, implying earnings shocks have substantial systematic components and are not almost fully diversifiable as prior literature has concluded. Furthermore, the...

This paper studies whether illiquidity affects the predictability of fundamental valuation variables. Firm-level, cross-sectional analyses show that returns of illiquid stocks contain less information about their firm's future earnings growth compared to those of more liquid stocks. A natural...

This paper examines whether analysts have an industry-level information advantage over managers when forecasting earnings. We argue that such an advantage is more likely to exist in industries where firm performance is more sensitive to industry-level external economic forces. We find that for...