Efficient market hypothesis predicts that capital markets are beset with cer-tain biases which result from wrong estimation, and negatively influence shareholders’ expectations for higher returns, which in turn affects invest-ment efficiency, financial constraints and corporate performance efficacy in competitive markets, and eventually mitigates firm value. The present study aims at examining ...

Using the unique data of analysts' site visits to Chinese listed companies, we examine whether and how analysts' site visits help improve their forecast performance. We find that the forecast accuracy of analysts improves after they visit the target firms and this improvement still holds after controlling for the concurrent change in the forecast accuracy of analysts who do not conduct site vis...

This study shows that analysts vary significantly in their responsiveness to earnings announcements, where responsiveness is defined as promptness of analysts’ first forecast revisions for the next quarter since the prior quarterly earnings announcements. Further evidence indicates that analysts’ responsiveness improves the efficiency of their expectations of future earnings immediately after t...

Both prior research and the popular financial press suggest that earnings smoothing is associated with higher valuations, per dollar of reported earnings. Apparently, smoothing causes reported earnings to be a less noisy measure of “permanent” earnings that can be sustained over the longterm. We extend those results to examine whether earnings smoothing is associated with higher valuations per ...

This paper examines the relation between smooth past earnings performance and the credibility of voluntary management earnings forecasts. Specifically, using strings of increasing earnings per share as our measure of past performance, we demonstrate that both analyst forecast revisions and stock price reactions around management earnings forecasts are more pronounced when the firm has posted a ...

Accurate projections of lifetime earnings are useful in projecting Social Security benefits, trust fund balances, and economic resources of the elderly and the effects of changes in Social Security policy. This article projects lifetime Social Security earnings until retirement using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to Social Security records of annual ear...

Earnings non-synchronicity captures the extent to which firm-specific factors determine a firm’s earnings, and has important implications to a firm’s information environment. Prior research shows that high earnings non-synchronicity impedes corporate outsiders’ information processing. Given managers generally possess superior information about their firms’ unique operating and reporting strateg...

In this study we examine different methodologies to estimate earnings. More specifically, we evaluate the viability of Genetic Programming as both a forecasting model estimator and a forecastcombining methodology. When we compare the performance of traditional mechanical forecasting (ARIMA) models and models developed using Genetic Programming we observe that Genetic Programming can be used to ...

W correlate analysts’ forecast errors with temporal variation in investor sentiment. We find that when sentiment is high, analysts’ forecasts of one-year-ahead earnings and long-term earnings growth are relatively more optimistic for “uncertain” or “difficult-to-value” firms. Adding these forecast errors to a regression of stock returns on sentiment absorbs a sizable fraction of the explanatory...

This study develops a theoretical model in which the voluntary disclosure of earnings forecast is a double-edged sword. Such disclosure may reduce the information asymmetry between investors and firms but simultaneously allows entrepreneurs create hype. Beginning from 2005 the disclosures of financial forecasts for Taiwanese public companies have not been mandatory, with firms being able to dec...