Despite the prevalence and importance of humor in interpersonal communication, the disclosure literature is silent on the use of humor in the context of corporate communications. We examine analysts' and managers' use of humor during public earnings conference calls. Using a sample of nearly...

Overconfident CEOs are known to overestimate their ability to generate returns, overpay for target firms, and take excessive risks. We find a CEO's overconfidence can also indirectly affect other market participants, specifically analysts who issue earnings forecasts. First, firms with...

This paper extends the study of Herrmann and Thomas (2005) on granularity in analyst forecasts at multiples of nickels and finds that forecasts at multiples of nickels are more optimistic, and induce weaker market responses. Granularity in analyst forecasts combined with managers’ incentive to...

This paper examines various factors affecting Chinese financial analysts' information comprehension, analyzing ability and job quality. We hypothesized that financial analysts with better educational background, more experience, superior resources provided by large brokerage firms and more...

Managerial behavior differs considerably when managers report quarterly profits versus losses. When they report profits, managers seek to just meet or slightly beat analyst estimates. When they report losses, managers do not attempt to meet or slightly beat analyst estimates. Instead, managers...

This paper examines cross-sectional differences in the optimistic behavior of financial analysts. Specifically, we investigate whether the predictive accuracy of past information (e.g., time-series of earnings, past returns, etc.) is associated with the magnitude of the bias in analysts'...

We study the effects of company diversification and analyst diversification on consensus and individual analysts' earnings forecasts. Company diversification is measured both as the number of segments reported by a company and as an entropy measure which decomposes the total diversification into...

This study compares the performance of sell-side equity analysts with and without a CFA designation. Using a large sample of forecasts, our tests indicate that CFA charterholders issue forecasts that are moderately timelier and bolder than those of non-charterholders. We find that charterholders...

This study examines individual analysts' relative strengths in earnings forecasting skill and stock picking skill. We define analysts with skill specialization when he has one skill substantially stronger than the other, and analysts with non-specialization when he has balanced skills. We follow...

Under the assumption that audit quality relates positively to unobservable financial reporting reliability, we investigate whether audit quality is associated with the predictability of accounting earnings by focusing on analyst earnings forecast properties. The evidence shows that analysts'...