We study the use of properties of analysts' forecasts as surrogates for unobservable constructs in empirical research. We provide an analytical framework with which to examine past empirical practice and contemplate future empirical research. Our model is used to interpret existing empirical...

Corporate spin-offs create new firms with characteristics markedly different from the original firm. Consequently, institutional investors pre-committed to certain investment styles and/or subject to fiduciary restrictions have incentives to rebalance their portfolios at the time of the...

We demonstrate the role of three empirical properties of cross-sectional distributions of analysts' forecast errors in generating evidence pertinent to three important and heretofore separately analyzed phenomena studied in the analyst earnings forecast literature: purported bias (intentional or...

The extensive literature that investigates whether analysts' earnings forecasts are biased and/or inefficient has produced a history of conflicting evidence and no definitive answers to either question. This paper shows how two relatively small but statistically influential asymmetries in the...

Corporate spin-offs create new firms with characteristics markedly different from the original firm. Consequently, institutional investors pre-committed to certain investment styles and/or subject to fiduciary restrictions have incentives to rebalance their portfolios at the time of the...