We find that on average an announcement of rising unemployment is “good news” for stocks during economic expansions and “bad news” during economic contractions. Thus stock prices usually increase on news of rising unemployment, since the economy is usually in an expansion phase. We provide an explanation for this phenomenon. Unemployment news bundles two primitive types of information relevant ...

Managers have incentives to voluntarily disclose good news early and delay bad news disclosure, and we propose that earnings announcements offset these asymmetric incentives by assuming a proportionately greater role in the disclosure of bad news relative to good news. We find that when news measured by quarterly market-adjusted returns is negative, the proportion of news variation concentrated...

This study examines the link between earnings announcement premia (i.e., higher returns in announcement periods) and changes in liquidity prior to the announcements. Motivated by prior research, we model market makers as holding positive inventories and show they asymmetrically raise costs of providing liquidity to sellers, relative to buyers, to reduce inventory risks ahead of earnings news. T...

This study presents empirical evidence concerning the effect of different accounting standard on earnings management. Prior studies have shown that accounting standards influence earnings management. Tighter accounting standards regime restricts management’s descretion to manipulate accruals, and at the same time, induce more costly real earnings management activities. To investigate this iss...

This study focuses on the market reaction to information transfers from economically linked customers. I examine whether investors have limited attention with respect to the information contained in customer earnings announcements for suppliers. Using 1083 unique customer–supplier relationships for the period 1983–2011, I find that the cumulative abnormal returns of a supplier surrounding and f...

Existing studies show that intra-firm variation in earnings announcement speeds correlates with earnings news, such that firms are more likely to decrease (increase) the speed of announcing bad (good) earnings news relative to their fiscal period end. We examine firms’ “expected abnormal reporting speeds” not just in relation to their own past behaviors, but also in relation to other firms anno...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Last-in-first-out First-in-first-out Information quality This study extends prior research by comparing the relative information quality of LIFO earnings and non-LIFO earnings using updated data and methodology. Results suggest LIFO earnings are incrementally informative independent of tax reporting implications. In addition to shedding light on why the results o...

Prior studies consistently report higher explanatory power (R) for firm-specific returns-earnings models than for pooled models. The improvement in R by adding firm-specific coefficients to returns-earnings regressions is cited as evidence that price responses to earnings news vary with certain firm-specific characteristics. We argue that relying on R as a criterion to evaluate competing return...

This dissertation consists of two essays. The first essay provides a rational explanation of the mysterious earnings discontinuity phenomenon. It also develops two new empirical predictions which are supported by the empirical tests. The second essay identifies conditions under which leading indicator variables discourage long-term investment. Essay 1: Discontinuity in Earnings Distribution: A ...

Increasing income and wealth inequality has led to renewed interest in understanding and explaining wealth and income distributions, and in particular the recent growth in their top shares (Piketty, 2014). The literature has largely emphasized the role of earnings inequality in explaining wealth inequality. Indeed, Bewley-Aiyagari economies, which focus on precautionary savings as an optimal re...