We decompose broad based measures of accruals into firm specific and related firm components. We find that the negative relation between accruals and future firm performance is almost entirely attributable to the firm specific component. Standard risk based explanations are hard to reconcile...

The paper presents an accounting framework for identifying characteristics that indicate expected returns. A model links expected returns to expected earnings and earnings growth, so a characteristic indicates expected returns if it indicates expected earnings and earnings growth that the market...

Setting the Stage -- Fixed Income - Strategic Asset Allocation -- Fixed Income - Tactial Asset Allocation -- Incumbent Active Fixed Income Managers -- Security Selection - Rate Sensitive Assets -- Security Selection - Credit Sensitive Assets -- Security Selection - Emerging Markets (Hard...

We examine whether managers' trading decisions (both at a firm and personal level) are correlated with trading strategies suggested by the operating accruals and the post-earnings announcement drift (SUE) anomalies. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of the use of managerial trading...

We analyze the relation between corporate financing activities and sell-side analysts' investment research. We document pervasive evidence of overoptimism in sell-side analysts' earnings forecasts, stock recommendations and target prices that is systematically related to corporate financing...

This paper explores whether firms that share common directors also pursue similar corporate policies. Using a sample of 885 U.S. firms with common directors, we find that director fixed effects strongly explain variation in firms' governance, financial, disclosure, and strategic policy choices....

We develop a comprehensive and parsimonious measure of the extent to which a firm is raising (distributing) capital from (to) capital market participants. We show that the relation between our measure of net external financing and future stock returns is stronger than has been documented in...

We extend the analysis in Sloan (1996) to identify the source of information in accruals about earnings quality. Our results indicate that information in accruals about earnings quality is not limited to the current accruals analyzed by Sloan, but extends to non-current accruals. We also show...

Existing research indicates that firms with high accruals are more likely to experience earnings reversals and lower returns in the future. It has further been shown that analysts and auditors do not anticipate these consequences. In this paper, I examine a sophisticated set of investors (short...

Prior research has documented the empirical regularity that more firms than expected (i) report small positive earnings and (ii) have zero forecast errors. It appears that management avoid reporting negative earnings or disappointing analysts. We investigate how and why firms beat these...