We employ a unique data set and new time-series techniques to reexamine the existence of trends in relative primary commodity prices. The data set comprises 25 commodities and provides a new historical perspective, spanning the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. New tests for the trend...

A number of U.S. studies have documented an optimistic bias in analysts’ forecasts of earnings. This study investigates whether the optimistic bias and asymmetric behavior of forecast errors found in most U.S. studies exists in Japan. We find that for firms reporting profits, Japanese...