This paper investigates the subsequent return implications of accruals within a sample of large, developed, international equity markets and assesses whether similar institutional features account for the accrual anomaly across countries. I investigate the returns implications of accruals in 17...

Artificial intelligence (AI), powered by machine learning algorithms, is capable of extracting information efficiently from big data and, therefore, has great potential for improving financial decision-making. In this chapter, we summarize several important applications of AI in this context....

Altamuro and Beatty (2009) examine financial reporting quality before and after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA). They document increases in the validity of the loan loss provision, earnings persistence, predictability of future cash flows and reductions in...

We investigate analysts' motives for rounding annual EPS forecasts (placing a zero or five in the penny location of the forecast). We first show that an intuitive reason for analysts to engage in rounding is in circumstances where the penny location of the forecast is of less economic...

In this paper we study the effect of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on earnings quality. Using a difference-in-differences method we find that firms that were required to comply with Section 404 during the first two years of its implementation improved the quality of their financial...

We study the immediate and delayed market response to SEC EDGAR 10-K filings. Unusual trading volumes and stock price movements are documented during the days around the 10-K filing dates. The abnormal price movements are positively associated with future accounting profitability, indicating...

We investigate the determinants of analysts' target price implied returns and the implication of our findings for investment decision-making. We identify four broad sets of factors that help explain the cross-sectional variation in target price implied returns: future realized stock returns,...

Prior studies challenge the practical usefulness of Markowitz portfolio optimization in improving the return-risk tradeoff in portfolio management. We approach this question from a unique angle by examining whether one can improve the performance of a large sample of actual mutual fund...