I study the association between revisions in analysts' consensus earnings forecasts and credit rating actions. Controlling for other information in the market, downwardly (upwardly) revised analyst consensus is associated with a higher likelihood of credit rating downgrades (upgrades) relative...

While a firm's success increasingly relies on technological innovation, little is known, however, about whether and how analysts utilize information about a firm's technological innovation for their information production. We construct technological expertise for each analyst-firm pair based on...

We provide empirical evidence that managers smooth earnings using discretionary R&D spending (i.e., real smoothing) when managerial compensation packages contain high risk-taking incentives. Specifically, we find that real smoothing is related to both the sensitivity of executive wealth to a...

In this paper, we examine how economy-wide sentiment, measured by the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index, affects analysts' research activities. Using a firm-fixed effects design, we find that consumer sentiment, notably the component related to economic fundamentals, is...

About half of managers' forecasts of annual earnings issued in recent years are updated regularly (i.e., updated every quarter), while only about 10% are not updated. Consistent with the dynamic disclosure theory that anticipation of future updates can affect earlier disclosure choices, we find...

Using a sample of firms that have consecutive earnings growth for more than 20 quarters (earnings strings), I assess the relationship between earnings persistence and the extent to which investors are able to anticipate breaks of earnings strings. I find that firm-specific earnings persistence...

Route planning is usually carried out to achieve a single objective such as to minimize transport cost, distance traveled or travel time. This article explores an approach to multi-objective route planning using a genetic algorithm (GA) and geographical information system (GIS) approach. The...