A long-standing puzzle in finance, first noted by Ingersoll (1977b), is that many firms delay the re-call of convertible bonds until the bonds' equity values by far exceed their values as straight debt. Butler (2002) argues that the delay is due to a put option which is granted to investors...

In this paper, we argue that the observed optimism in analysts' forecasts of earnings is related to the costs and benefits to analysts of issuing optimistic forecasts — when the costs of issuing an optimistic forecast are high relative to the benefits of doing so, optimism will be less...