Bank regulators and academics have long conjectured the beneficial effects of smoothing in loan loss provisions (i.e., making higher provisions during good times so as to avoid doing so during bad times) for bank lending and stability, while accounting regulators express concerns about its...

We describe the challenges of forecasting earnings in a globally interconnected marketplace, and we document inefficient use of information regarding foreign country exposures and expected country GDP growth at the consensus and individual forecast levels. A country's proximity to the US,...

We propose a framework for analyzing spatial competition between retailers of different formats. Our approach yields localized measures of concentration and store-level diversion ratios that can be used to prospectively evaluate mergers in highly differentiated retail markets. Our method does...

Since 2010 a number of firms have voluntarily adopted mark-to-market (MTM) accounting for the actuarial gains and losses associated with their defined benefit pension plans. While pension accounting rules have allowed such a choice since 1986, only recently have firms begun to exercise that...

Analysts often update their recommendations following corporate news. Questions have been raised regarding analysts' ability to generate new information beyond recent corporate events. Employing a comprehensive database on corporate news we show that only a small minority of 27.9% of all...