This paper investigates potential cases of earnings management by observing the pattern of quarterly earnings changes. We identify firms for which the sign of (seasonal) earnings changes observed in interim quarters reverses in the fourth quarter. We hypothesize that a firm performing poorly in...

This paper examines the informativeness of earnings announcements, by focusing on the role of event windows within which the information content is measured. This focus on event windows is primarily motivated by recent trends towards the announcement of earnings during after-market hours. It is...

This paper investigates the association between current dividends and analysts’ subsequent earnings forecast errors. This investigation is motivated by the evidence on analyst optimism and Ohlson (1991)’s fundamental valuation theory that dividends displace future permanent earnings. For the...

This paper examines cross-sectional differences in the optimistic behavior of financial analysts. Specifically, we investigate whether the predictive accuracy of past information (e.g., time-series of earnings, past returns, etc.) is associated with the magnitude of the bias in analysts'...