In this paper, we compare First Call analyst forecasts to unofficial forecasts of quarterly earnings per share commonly referred to as whisper forecasts. Our analysis yields the following results. First, we find that whispers are, on average, more accurate than First Call forecasts and are...

This study investigates whether analysts who pay attention to investor sentiment issue more or less profitable stock recommendations than their peers. We find that analysts whose stock recommendations are positively correlated with recent or future investor sentiment tend to issue relatively...

We ask whether the private debt contracts of family firms contain more restrictive covenants tied to accounting numbers than those of non-family firms. Our examination of Dealscan data indicates that Samp;P 500 family firms are more likely to include accounting-based covenants that limit the...

We examine how biased financial reports (managed earnings) affect how firms compete in the product market and how product market competition affects incentives to bias reported earnings. We find that Cournot competitors bias their financial reports so as to create the impression that their costs...

We examine the impact of Regulation Fair Disclosure on the competitive advantage of All-Star analysts as measured by turnover in the rankings. Institutional Investor All-Americans, chosen by votes of institutional investors based on overall helpfulness, experienced a significant increase in...

In this paper, we ask whether investors' responses to nines in the rightmost digits of stock prices are similar to consumers' responses to nines in the rightmost digits of retail prices. In contrast to the increase in demand that is often observed for 9-ending retail prices, excessive overnight...

Using a Verrecchia [1983]-type model, we study the optimal voluntary disclosure strategy of a manager with private information that helps the market interpret financial information the firm is required to report. In equilibrium, the manager's disclosure strategy enhances upward or mitigates...

We reexamine the descriptive ability of the conventional wisdom that earnings announcements made after trading and on Friday are dominated by bad news in light of the 24/7 media coverage and other technological changes of the 1990s. We find that the change in media coverage has facilitated a...

Abstract, Part I: This paper uses periods of unusually heavy earnings estimate revision activity by analysts to assess the relative usefulness of corporate information events (CIEs) in firm valuation. Because accounting information is more readily available, newsworthy and accessible, we...