Firms that substantially increase capital investments subsequently achieve negative benchmark-adjusted returns. The negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is shown to be stronger for firms that have greater investment discretion, i.e., firms with higher cash flows and lower debt...

Firms that substantially increase capital investments subsequently achieve negative benchmark-adjusted returns. The negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is shown to be stronger for firms that have greater investment discretion, i.e., firms with higher cash flows and lower debt...

Hong and Kacperczyk (2010) document that decreases in analyst competition due to broker mergers encourage analysts to please managers, leading to greater consensus optimism bias. We propose two addition effects of analyst competition. The hardworking hypothesis suggests that lower competition...