We suggest a robust form of conditional moment test as a constructive test for functional misspecification in multiplicative error models. The proposed test has power solely against violations of the conditional mean restriction but is not affected by any other type of model misspecification....

We develop a model to predict bankruptcies, exploiting that negative book equity is a strong indicator of financial distress. Accordingly, our key predictor of bankruptcy is the probability that future losses will deplete a firm's book equity. To calculate this probability, we use earnings...

We analyze three different mechanical models to forecast earnings and compare their forecasts with those of analysts. Moreover, we evaluate implied cost of capital (ICC) estimates that are based on these forecasts. With our analyses we answer three open questions in the literature. 1) Do model...

Recent findings indicate that macroeconomic survey forecasts are anchoring biased and therefore are inefficient. However, despite highly significant test coefficients a bias adjustment does not improve forecasts' quality. We find that the cognitive bias is a statistical artifact and that the...

Recent findings indicate that macroeconomic survey forecasts are anchoring biased and therefore are inefficient. However, despite highly significant test coefficients a bias adjustment does not improve forecasts' quality. We find that the cognitive bias is a statistical artifact because the...