We examine the long-term stock performance of analyst recommendations and the properties of accompanied earnings forecasts for initiations and non-initiations to evaluate the reporting, selection, and processing explanations for analyst optimism. We find that Strong Buy and, to a lesser degree,...

Prior research has documented that earnings announcements provide information not only about the announcing firm but also about other firms in the same industry. We document a stock market anomaly associated with this phenomenon of intra-industry information transfers by showing that the stock...

Prior research has documented that earnings announcements provide information not only about the announcing firm but also about other firms in the same industry. We document a stock market anomaly associated with this phenomenon of intra-industry information transfers by showing that the stock...

We examine the effects of liquidity, default and personal taxes on the relative yields of Treasuries and municipals using a generalized model with liquidity risk. The municipal yield model includes liquidity as a state factor. Using a unique transaction dataset, we are able to estimate the...

This article explores the expectations of the credit market by developing a parsimonious default swap model, which is versatile enough to disentangle default probability from the expected recovery rate, accommodate counterparty default risk, and allow flexible correlation between state...

From a credit risk perspective, little is known about the distress factors - economy-wide or firm-specific - that are important in explaining variations in defaultable coupon yields. This paper proposes and empirically tests a family of credit risk models. Empirically, we find that firm-specific...

Utilizing a comprehensive database of transactions in municipal bonds, we investigate the volume-volatility relationship in the muni market. We find a positive relationship between the number of transactions and a bond's price volatility. In contrast to previous studies, we find a negative...

In recent years, credit rating agencies have faced increased regulatory pressure and investor criticism for their ratings' lack of timeliness. This study investigates whether and how rating agencies respond to such pressure and criticism. We find that the rating agencies not only improve rating...

Standard finance theory suggests that managers invest in projects that, in expectation, produce returns that justify the use of capital. An underlying assumption is that managers have the information necessary to understand the distributional properties of the pay-offs underlying the decision....