This study evaluates the impact of earnings on firm credit risk as captured by Credit Default Swaps (CDS). We find that earnings (changes) are negatively correlated with one-year swap premia (changes) after controlling for equity returns but not with longer term premia (changes). We also find that earnings surprises are significantly correlated with one-year CDS premia changes in the short wind...

This paper looks at longitudinal aspects of changes in Italian male earnings inequality since the late 1970s by decomposing the earnings autocovariance structure into its persistent and transitory parts. Cross-sectional earnings differentials are found to grow over the period. The longitudinal analysis shows that such growth is determined by the permanent earnings component and is due both to a...

This paper estimates the effect of participation in high school extracurricular activities on future earnings, making three important contributions to the existing literature: 1) it compares the earnings effects of participation in different types of clubs; 2) it investigates whether the effect of clubs participation is constant over time; and 3) it employs an instrumental variables approach in...

Despite the recovery of economic growth in Latin America during the 1990s, rising unemployment, high informality rates and sluggish wages lie at the root of high inequality and poverty. This paper looks at changes in hourly earnings from the early 1990s to the early 2000s in three relatively stable countries: Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Using econometric techniques, the paper decomposes the chang...

Long historical averages of real earnings help forecast present values of future real dividends. With aggregate U.S. stock market data (1871-1986), a vector-autoregressive forecast of the present value of future dividends is, for each year, roughly a weighted average of moving-average arnings and current real price, with between two thirds and three fourths of the weight on the earnings measure...

In this paper, we use the definition of residual income to develop a framework that decomposes changes in net income into different components. The two components we focus on are the change in net income driven by investment (investment-driven growth), and the change in net income driven by improvements in the productivity of existing assets (productivity-driven growth). Building on the vast li...

Conditions in the market for lawyers have been remarkably turbulent over the course of the last forty years, both in terms of the size of the legal industry and the earnings of attorneys. Similarly, law school demand has been in a state of constant flux, oscillating between cycles of boom and bust. This study examines the appeal of law school over the same period, using administrations of the L...

This study investigates the reliability of management earnings forecasts with reference to these two ingredients: verifiability and neutrality. Specifically, we examine the biasedness (or accuracy) of management earnings forecasts and company specific characteristics that can be associated with accuracy. Based on sample of 102 IPO prospectuses published for admission on NYSE Euronext Paris from...