In this paper, we compare First Call analyst forecasts to unofficial forecasts of quarterly earnings per share commonly referred to as whisper forecasts. Our analysis yields the following results. First, we find that whispers are, on average, more accurate than First Call forecasts and are...

Using a Verreccia [1983]-type model, we study the optimal voluntary disclosure strategy of a manager with private information that helps the market interpret financial information the firm is required to report. In equilibrium, the manager’s disclosure strategy enhances upward or mitigates...

This paper examines the impact of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) on the competitive advantage of All-Star analysts. We find that Institutional Investor All-Americans, chosen by the votes of institutional investors based on overall helpfulness to the buy-side, experienced a significant...

We reexamine the descriptive ability of the conventional wisdom that earnings announcements made after trading and on Friday are dominated by bad news in light of the 24/7 media coverage and other technological changes of the 1990’s. We find that the change in media coverage has facilitated a...

As part of a broad competitive intelligence strategy, firms expect to acquire information about their rivals’ customers and production processes. In this study, we examine the firms’ incentives to disclose this information. We find that firms adopt a policy of disclosing their information...

In many situations, one party can monitor a second party and chooses how much monitoring to do. However, in many of these situations, monitoring by other parties can (imperfectly) substitute for monitoring by the first party. As a result, the first party may attempt to "free ride" on the...

We model firms as competing for socially responsible consumers by linking the provision of a public good (environmentally friendly or socially responsible activities) to sales of their private goods. In many cases, too little of the public good is provided but under certain conditions,...

This study investigates whether analysts who pay attention to investor sentiment issue more or less profitable stock recommendations than their peers. We find that analysts whose stock recommendations are positively correlated with recent or future investor sentiment tend to issue relatively...

We study a firm's decisions to engage in socially responsible activities, voluntarily report on them and purchase external assurance of the report. In our signaling model, neither firm type nor the level of activity is observed. We show that if voluntary assurance is not too expensive, the firm...