financial analysts forecast revisions and managers reporting behavior abstract this paper studies an analyst s forecasting strategy and a manager s earnings management policy when reporting earnings the manager trades off the disutility he obtains from falling short of the analyst s forecast against the costs of manipulating earnings the model predicts that i the analyst s forecast exceeds median reported earnings ii the analyst is more likely to revise his forecast downward than upward iii mean and median forecast errors are larger in magnitude when the analyst has less precise information and iv the stock market is on average more sensitive to reported earnings than to the analyst s forecasts

analysts weighting of private and public information using both a linear regression method and a probability based method we find that on average analysts place larger than efficient weights on i e they overweight their private information when they forecast corporate earnings we also find that analysts overweight more when issuing forecasts more favorable than the consensus and overweight less and may even underweight private information when issuing forecasts less favorable than the consensus further the deviation from efficient weighting increases when the benefits from doing so are high or when the costs of doing so are low these results suggest that analysts incentives play a larger role in misweighting than their behavioral biases copyright 2006 oxford university press

asset management and affiliated analysts forecasts the interaction between the various departments of a full service brokerage firm can have positive effects an asset management department operates the firm s mutual funds and has a need for high quality information thus the firm s sell side analysts in the research department are motivated to gather information about particular securities and to use the asset management department as an additional information source the outcome can be to raise the quality of sell side analysts earnings forecasts in the study reported here affiliated analysts earnings forecasts for a security became significantly more accurate as the fund family s percentage ownership of that security increased also the study found a significant positive relationship between the accuracy of an affiliated analyst before the new investment and the percentage of the company s shares acquired by that fund family the implication is that fund families make the largest purchases of stocks for which their affiliated analysts provided th

analysts interim earnings forecasts evidence on the forecasting process existing empirical evidence indicates that analyst forecasts of corporate earnings do not meet the strict rationality standards prescribed by econometric tests of the rational expectations hypothesis 1 in this paper we address the question of whether the expectation formation process underlying analyst forecasts is adaptive or whether these forecasts are influenced by noninformational factors such as incentives arising from the market for their forecasts o brien 1988 lin and mcnichols 1993 francis and philbrick 1993 and dugar and nathan 1992 and interaction between judgmental and or statistical forecasting methods bunn and wright 1991 fan 1990 and hoerl and kennard 1970 the rejection of rational expectations gives rise to two views of the forecasting process of analysts the first based on an informational argument is that the forecasting process is adaptive marcet and sargent

analyst reputation communication and information acquisition earlier studies have shown that reputational concerns tend to reduce agents opportunistic behavior however a recent study by morris argued that analysts experts reputational concerns may discourage truthful communication when they try to avoid being perceived as being misaligned with investors in this paper i examine the effect of reputational concerns on communication in a setting where analysts can choose their precision endogenously because both misaligned and aligned analysts want investors to trust their reports in the future both will aim to build a reputation for being aligned in equilibrium aligned analysts will acquire more information than misaligned analysts as a result investors may favorably update their beliefs about the analysts type when the report is proven to be accurate therefore both types of analysts will have reputational incentives to communicate truthfully the paper also derives conditions under which the analysts reputational concerns have a nonmonotonic impact on aligned analysts equilibrium precision choices and investors welfare

the welfare implications of moral hazard and adverse selection in competitive insurance markets i model a competitive insurance market with both moral hazard and adverse selection and analyze the effect on welfare when both problems are present simultaneously an examination of the interaction between these two problems leads to two hypotheses first the nature of the equilibrium contracts is such that each problem partially offsets the welfare loss associated with the other and second the degree to which this occurs increases as agents become more heterogeneous simulation results overwhelmingly support both hypotheses

mutual forbearance and competition among security analysts research in industrial organization and strategic management has shown that rivals competing with each other in multiple markets are more willing to show each other mutual forbearance i e compete less aggressively within their spheres of influence i e the markets in which each firm dominates sell side equity analysts typically cover multiple stocks in common with their rivals we examine the impact of this multipoint contact for mutual forbearance on two key dimensions of competition among security analysts forecast accuracy and information leadership issuing earnings forecasts or stock recommendations that influence rival analysts we find that multipoint contact is associated with analysts exerting greater information leadership on stocks within their own spheres of influence we also find greater forbearance related to information leadership under regulation fair disclosure reg fd in contrast multipoint contact was not associated with greater forecast accuracy on stocks within analysts

rational expectations analysts forecasts of earnings and sources of value gains for takeover targets abstract value gains to target firm shareholders in takeover bids may be due to potential synergy between bidder and target and or potential target restructuring based on new information released by the bid since these two models have different implications for the anticipated earnings of the target as a stand alone entity analysts earnings forecast revisions afr for the target during the bid may provide evidence for the new information hypothesis for 326 uk targets of takeover bids during 1987 1993 we estimate analysts earnings forecast revisions using the institutional brokers estimate system ibes and relate them to bid premia paid to target shareholders analysts revise their forecasts significantly up on bid announcement for failed especially failed hostile bids the earnings forecast revision and bid premium are more positively correlated than for successful and friendly bids this is consistent with the rational expectations behaviour of target shareholders modelled by grossman and hart s j grossman o d hart bell journal of economics 11 1 1980 42 s j grossman o d hart journal of finance 36 1981 253

does asymmetric information matter in the early insurance market evidence from the auto insurance market in the late 1960s the performance of automobile insurance declined dramatically in japan in spite of rapid growth in the diffusion rate and the premiums were sharply raised several times in order to improve the situation this observation indicates the possible presence of adverse selection death spiral and provides an ideal situation for assessing informational asymmetry using bodily injury liability bil insurance data from 46 japanese prefectures over the period 1966 to 1975 this article tests two hypotheses of adverse selection i high risk drivers were more likely to join the bil insurance market and ii sharp premium increases drove low risk policyholders away various empirical analyses show that there is little evidence for either type of adverse selection we also test whether a risk misperception hypothesis can explain our results and find some evidence that the population density have a significantly positive impact on the demand for bil insurance an earlier version of this artic

adverse selection repeated insurance contracts and announcement strategy in this note we present a strategy which relies on multi period contracts and on a self selection mechanism which induces the insured to announce his true risk in the first period thus eliminating inefficiency due to adverse selection

multi period insurance contracts this paper examines the form of insurance contracts in the presence of asymmetric information about consumers accident probabilities our goal is to understand the adjustment in contract terms as a function of accident histories in a finite horizon model we also compare these adjustments between alternative market structures our principal findings indicate that history dependent insurance contracts serve a useful sorting role individuals who declare themselves low risks to insurance companies face adverse contracturai terms if they subsequently have many accidents these adjustments are strongest in the case of a single insurance seller but are present in the competitive model as well

a positive model of earnings forecasts top down versus bottom up this article analyzes the behavior of two groups of corporate earnings forecasters analysts who follow individual company fortunes and market strategists who predict earnings for various company aggregates using data for two market indices the s p 500 and the dow jones industrial average we document that bottom up forecasts are systematically more optimistic than top down forecasts made by strategists this difference is not driven by the difference in the forecast target this finding may be explained by the incentives that analysts face and or by cognitive bias

dynamic portfolio choice with parameter uncertainty and the economic value of analysts recommendations we derive a closed form solution for the optimal portfolio of a non myopic utility maximizer who has incomplete information about the alphas or abnormal returns of risky securities we show that the hedging component induced by learning about the expected return can be a substantial part of the demand using our methodology we perform an ex ante empirical exercise which shows that the utility gains resulting from optimal allocation are substantial in general especially for long horizons and an ex post empirical exercise which shows that analysts recommendations are not very useful

earnings skewness and analyst forecast bias abstract we argue that if analysts objective is to provide the most accurate forecast by minimizing the mean absolute forecast error then the optimal forecast is the median instead of the mean earnings forecast bias is observed when the median is different from the mean in a skewed earnings distribution thus part of the observed analyst forecast bias could be a result of analysts efforts to improve forecast accuracy when the earnings distribution is skewed we find that earnings skewness is significantly related to analyst forecast bias we also provide evidence that the market adjusts for part of the skewness induced bias

analyzing the analysts career concerns and biased earnings forecasts this paper examines the career concerns of security analysts we relate long histories of their earnings forecasts to job separations we find that relatively accurate past forecasts lead to favorable career outcomes such as remaining at or moving up to a high status large prestigious brokerage house controlling for accuracy optimistic forecasts relative to the consensus increase the chances of favorable job separations job separations depend much less on accuracy for analysts who cover stocks that are underwritten by their brokerage houses such analysts are also much more likely to be rewarded for optimistic forecasts than other analysts furthermore job separations were much less sensitive to accuracy and somewhat more sensitive to optimism during the stock market mania of the late 1990s these findings suggest that the well documented analyst forecast optimism bias is likely due to incentives to promote stocks

voluntary disclosures and analyst feedback we study the resource allocation role of voluntary disclosures when feedback from financial markets is potentially useful to managers in undertaking value maximizing actions managers weigh the short term price implications of disclosure against the long term efficiency gains due to feedback while financial analysts strategically produce information the model can explain why managers disclose bad information e g grim outlook that reduces the stock price and why prices respond more strongly to bad news relative to good news we find that not all firms enjoy the same quality of feedback and that feedback by itself does not induce more disclosure but less

the conduct of monetary policy with a shrinking stock of government debt this article considers the consequences for a central bank of a declining stock of government debt the model has a treasury that taxes spends and issues debt a central bank that conducts open market operations in treasury debt and banks that intermediate private savings it suggests that a sufficiently small stock of debt can put an economy on the pareto inferior side of the seigniorage laffer curve implying unnecessarily high inflation if there is also a primary budget deficit equilibrium might not exist discount window lending is a potentially desirable alternative to open market operations especially if the loans are not subsidized

optimal multiperiod contracts and the gain from enduring relationships under private information informational asymmetries can play a key role in explaining the existence and nature of multiperiod contracts in an illustrative risk sharing model even relatively short two period contracts can be mutually beneficial if there is private information though one period contracts suffice otherwise further contracts which are pareto optimal relative to the environment and the information structure are defined and partially characterized an example illustrates how otherwise inefficient intertemporal tie ins can be used optimally to mitigate incentive problems the obvious borrowing lending schemes are not private information pareto optimal in these period by period actions are not sufficiently constrained discounting affects the form of the optimal contract but none of these qualitative conclusions

can analysts assess fundamental risk and valuation uncertainty an empirical analysis of scenario based value estimates abstract we use a data set of sell side analysts scenario based equity valuation estimates to examine whether analysts can assess the state contingent risk surrounding a firm s fundamental value we find that the spread in analysts scenario based valuations captures the riskiness of operations and predicts the absolute magnitude of long run valuation errors and future changes in firm fundamentals we also show that analysts assessment of fundamental risk and its predictive ability systematically improved after the financial crisis consistent with the macroeconomic shock raising analysts awareness of firms systematic risk exposures

loss function assumptions in rational expectations tests on financial analysts earnings forecasts abstract prior research concludes that financial analysts do not process public information efficiently in generating their earnings forecasts the ordinary least squares ols regression based tests used in prior studies assume implicitly that analysts face a quadratic loss function in contrast we argue that analysts likely face a linear loss function and hence try to minimize their absolute forecast errors we conduct and compare rational expectations tests using these two alternative loss functions we reproduce most prior findings of forecast inefficiency with ols regressions but find virtually no evidence of forecast inefficiency with least absolute deviation regressions where we explicitly assume a linear loss function

endogenous entry exit as an alternative explanation for the disciplining role of independent analysts abstract gu and xue 2008 the superiority and disciplining role of independent analysts journal of accounting and economics this issue doi 10 1016 j jacceco 2008 02 002 study the disciplining effect of independent analysts on the accuracy and forecast relevance of the forecasts of non independent analysts one of the intriguing results is that while independent analysts issue inferior forecasts their presence appears to reduce the forecast bias improve the forecast accuracy and increase the forecast relevance of forecasts issued by non independent analysts we explore alternative explanations for the gu xue results our evidence of endogenous entry and exit of independent analysts provides a more compelling explanation for the reported results

a theory of wage dynamics a dynamic equilibrium model of long term implicit labour contracts under incomplete but symmetric information is developed workers are assumed to be risk averse and of unknown ability or productivity risk neutral firms learn as do workers about each worker s productivity by observing the worker s output over time it is shown that equilibrium contracts provide for wages which never decline with age and increase only when the worker s market value increases above his current wage in addition to characterizing the equilibrium wage contract we also derive some of its implications for the behaviour of aggregate wages across various groups of workers these implications explain some findings in the recent empirical literature on ageearnings profiles in particular our model can explain why earnings may be positively related to experience even after controlling for productivity as some empirical studies have indicated

entry size distribution scale and scope economies in the life insurance industry existing empirical studies in the life insurance industry in the united states and canada find evidence of economies of scale in at least some aspects of the production of life insurance with consequent implications for the efficiency of life insurance markets however these empirical results are inconsistent with the institutional facts in the industry first overall economies of scale houston and simon 1970 are at odds with the evidence that over a substantial period of time the life insurance market in canada and the united states has supported a large and growing number of independent firms of vastly different sizes 1 second if economies of scale account for the differences in firm size with small firms ex

competitive parity status disparity and mutual forbearance securities analysts competition for investor attention most studies of responses to change in competitive environments focus on competitor specific adaptations however rivals are often acutely aware of one another and this awareness should influence their competitive behavior in this study we focus on three market structures that affect competitive behavior competitive parity status disparity and multipoint contact in particular we examine how securities analysts responded to a regulatory discontinuity regulation fair disclosure reg fd which promotes competitive parity by eliminating privileged access to proprietary firm information as a critical source of competitive advantage we predict and find that reg fd activated mutual forbearance among analysts linked through multipoint contact we also predict and find that high status analysts forbear more strongly analysts responses to heterogeneity in competitive advantage thus depend importantly on their competitive overlap and status which has implications for both their behavior and the information they provide to investors

do analysts generate trade for their firms evidence from the toronto stock exchange abstract it has generally been assumed that the potential commission revenue is an important determinant of a sell side analyst s decision of what firms to cover and what information to publicly release however because stock volume has not been disaggregated on a brokerage firm level uncertainty remains regarding the economic importance of the relation between analyst coverage and brokerage firm volume using a unique data set that identifies the broker s involved in each trade i find that brokerage volume is significantly higher in covered stocks than in uncovered stocks on average brokers increase their market share in covered stocks by 3 8 relative to uncovered stocks

cost function estimation and quality bias the regulated automobile insurance industry this article explores the implications of endogenous product quality and therefore endogenous output in the empirical estimation of cost functions for regulated automobile collision insurance firms it contains a structural model of such a firm and provides an illustration of the types of biases that can result if data on quality of service are unavailable or otherwise omitted the analysis shows how the directions of biases depend on the nature of the variations in the observed nonquality data a new test suggests that such bias is present in insurance cost functions

misspecification of capital asset pricing this study documents empirical anomalies which suggest that either the simple one period capital asset pricing model capm is misspecified or that capital markets are inefficient in particular portfolios based on firm size or earnings price e p ratios experience average returns systematically different from those predicted by the capm furthermore the abnormal returns persist for at least two years this persistence reduces the likelihood that these results are being generated by a market inefficiency rather the evidence seems to indicate that the equilibrium pricing model is misspecified however the data also reveals that an e p effect does not emerge after returns are controlled for the firm size effect the firm size effect largely subsumes the e p effect thus while the e p anomaly and value anomaly exist when each variable is considered separately the two anomalies seem to be related to the same set of missing factors and these factors appear to be more closely associated with firm size than e p ratios

price regulation in property liability insurance a contingent claims approach a discrete time option pricing model is used to derive the fair rate of return for the property liability insurance firm the rationale for the use of this model is that the financial claims of shareholders policyholders and tax authorities can be modeled as european options written on the income generated by the insurer s asset portfolio this portfolio consists mostly of traded financial assets and is therefore relatively easy to value by setting the value of the shareholders option equal to the initial surplus an implicit solution for the fair insurance price may be derived unlike previous insurance regulatory models this approach addresses the ruin probability of the insurer as well as nonlinear tax effects

the association between trading recommendations and broker analysts earnings forecasts this study examines analyst forecast errors within the context of stock recommendations we predict positive forecast error i e optimism for buy recommendations and negative forecast error i e pessimism for sell recommendations we offer two explanations for this prediction 1 the unconscious tendency to process information in a manner that supports one s goal which we refer to as the objectivity illusion hypothesis and 2 the economic incentive to boost trade which we refer to as the trade boosting hypothesis the pattern of analyst forecast bias we predict i e optimism for buys and pessimism for sells is opposite in direction to that predicted by the management relations hypothesis a commonly cited hypothesis for analyst forecast bias we find broker analyst earnings forecast errors are significantly optimistic for buy recommendations and significantly pessimistic for sell

currency elasticity and banking panics theory and evidence existing models of banking panics contain no role for monetary factors and fail to explain why some banking systems experienced panics while others did not a monetary model is constructed where seasonal variations in the demand for liquidity and credit play a critical role in generating banking panics these panics occur when there are restrictions on the issue of currency in private banks but they do not occur if banks are unrestricted empirical evidence from canada and the united states for the period 1880 1910 is largely consistent with the predictions of the model

economic organization with limited communication this paper presents formal stylized representations of communication accounting systems oral assignment portable object written message and telecommunication systems are considered the environments that allow this formalization are characterized by spatial separation private information and a need to keep track of past actions transfers and shocks in environments that have spatial separation and private information beneficial multilateral arrangements can depend critically on agents ability to communicate to one another values of contemporary shocks and to keep track of histories of past transfers or past announced shocks this paper formalizes this idea and focuses on com

conflicts of interest in the stock recommendations of investment banks and their determinants this study explores the phenomena associated with conflicts of interest particularly as they pertain to the brokerage and proprietary trading divisions of investment banks this distinguishes it from past studies which have researched conflicts of interest between underwriting and brokerage divisions we examine whether or not an investment bank issues buy recommendations to the market and buys sells the same recommended stocks through its proprietary trading division before after recommendations and if so to what extent this goes on we find that these conflicts of interest do exist and that these investment banks can profit from their recommendations in the short run

monetary policy and the transaction role of money in the us the declining importance of money in transactions can explain the well known fact that u s interest rate policy was passive in the pre volcker period and active after 1982 we generalise a standard cashless new keynesian model woodford2003 by incorporating an explicit transaction role for money in the pre volcker period we estimate that money did play an important role and determinacy required a passive interest rate policy however after 1982 money no longer played an important role in facilitating transactions correspondingly the conventional view prevails and an active policy ensured equilibrium determinacy

economic growth financial evolution and the long run behavior of velocity a general equilibrium model is presented in which buyers and sellers find it increasingly difficult to make private credit arrangements as economic activity spreads into new markets hence the demand for money increases as the structure of production and trade becomes more complex at the same time however financial innovations allow agents to economize on their cash balances together these effects of technological progress account for two empirical regularities the u shaped pattern in velocity and the ever increasing share of productive resources devoted to the private financial sector that are associated with the process of real economic growth

information spillovers margins scale and scope with an application to canadian life insurance a model of the production of life insurance services is developed the focus is on price setting ability and the cost advantages from size and diversity the model characterizes insurers decisions on the face value and number of policies and the number of insurance lines the model is applied to canadian life insurance firms unit revenue cost margins average from 13 per cent to 40 per cent across lines of insurance these margins emanate from information spillovers generated by marketing activities cost advantages due to size are small but are substantial from diversity returns to scale average from 1 13 to 1 40 while returns to scope from offering multiple insurance lines average from 70 per cent to 100 per cent

competition and bias we attempt to measure the effect of competition on bias in the context of analyst earnings forecasts which are known to be excessively optimistic because of conflicts of interest our natural experiment for competition is mergers of brokerage houses which result in the firing of analysts because of redundancy e g one of the two oil stock analysts is let go and other reasons such as culture clash we use this decrease in analyst coverage for stocks covered by both merging houses before the merger the treatment sample to measure the causal effect of competition on bias we find that the treatment sample simultaneously experiences a decrease in analyst coverage and an increase in optimism bias the year after the merger relative to a control group of stocks consistent with competition reducing bias the implied economic effect from our natural experiment is significantly larger than estimates from ols regressions that do not correct for the endogeneity of coverage this effect is much more significant for stocks with little initial analyst coverage or competition

gaap versus the street an empirical assessment of two alternative definitions of earnings managers security analysts investors and the press rely increasingly on modified definitions of gaap net income known by such names as operating and pro forma earnings we document this phenomenon and discuss competing explanations for the recent rise in the use of such modified earnings numbers and implications for the interpretation of related accounting research our results show that over the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in the frequency and magnitude of cases where gaap and street earnings differ further there is a very strong bias toward the reporting of a street earnings number that exceeds the gaap earnings number we also show that the market response to the street earnings number has displaced gaap earnings as a primary determinant of stock prices finally through an analysis of earnings releases we show that management has taken a proactive role in defining and emphasizing the street number when communicating to analysts and investors

the valuation of multivariate contingent claims in discrete time models there are several examples in the literature of contingent claims whose payoffs depend on the outcomes of two or more stochastic variables familiar cases of such claims include options on a portfolio of options options whose exercise price is stochastic and options to exchange one asset for another this paper derives risk neutral valuation relationships rnvrs in a discrete time setting that facilitate the pricing of such complex contingent claims in two specific cases joint lognormally distributed underlying variables and constant proportional risk aversion on the part of investors and joint normally distributed underlying variables and constant absolute risk aversion preferences respectively this methodology is then applied to the valuation of several interesting complex contingent claims such as multiperiod bonds multicurrency option bonds and investment options

do security analysts speak in two tongues why do security analysts issue overly positive recommendations we propose a novel approach to distinguish strategic motives e g generating small investor purchases and pleasing management from nonstrategic motives genuine overoptimism we argue that nonstrategic distorters tend to issue both positive recommendations and optimistic forecasts while strategic distorters speak in two tongues issuing overly positive recommendations but less optimistic forecasts we show that the incidence of strategic distortion is large and systematically related to proxies for incentive misalignment our two tongues metric reveals strategic distortion beyond those indicators and provides a new tool for detecting incentives to distort that are hard to identify otherwise

money banking and capital formation we consider a monetary growth model in which banks arise to provide liquidity in addition there is a government that issues not only money but interest bearing bonds these bonds compete with capital in private portfolios when the government fixes a constant growth rate for the money stock we show that there can exist multiple nontrivial monetary steady states one of these steady states is a saddle while the other can be a sink moreover paths approaching a steady state can display damped endogenous fluctuations and development trap phenomena are common across different steady states low capital stocks are associated with high nominal interest rates the latter signal the comparative inefficiency of the financial system also increases in the steady state inflation rate can easily reduce the steady state capital stock journal of economic literatureclassification numbers e13 e44 e50 g20 o16

the effects of open market operations in a model of intermediation and growth we examine an otherwise standard model of capital accumulation to which spatial separation and limited communication create a role for money and shocks to portfolio needs create a role for banks in this context we examine the existence multiplicity and dynamical properties of monetary equilibria with positive nominal interest rates moderate levels of risk aversion can lead to the existence of multiple monetary steady states all of which can be approached from a given set of initial conditions in addition even if there is a unique monetary steady state monetary equilibria can be indeterminate and oscillatory equilibrium paths can be observed thus financial market frictions are a potential source of both indeterminacies and endogenously arising economic volatility we also consider the consequences of monetary policy actions that rearrange the composition of government liabilities contractionary monetary policy activities can have complicated consequences depending especially on the nature of the steady state equilibrium that obtains when there are multiple steady states under plausible conditions however a permanent contractionary change in monetary policy raises both the nominal rate of interest and the rate of inflation and reduces long run output levels thus liquidity provision by a central bank just as by the banking system as a whole can be growth promoting loose monetary policy also is conducive to avoiding development trap phenomena

bias in european analysts earnings forecasts forecasting company earnings is a difficult and hazardous task in an efficient market where analysts learn from past mistakes there should be no persistent and systematic biases in consensus earnings accuracy previous research has already established how some single individual company characteristics systematically influence forecast accuracy so far however the effect on consensus earnings biases of a company s sector and country affiliation combined with a range of other fundamental characteristics has remained largely unexplored using data for 1993 2002 this article disentangles and quantifies for a broad universe of european stocks how the number of analysts following a stock the dispersion of their forecasts the volatility of earnings the sector and country classification of the covered company and its market capitalization influence the accuracy of the consensus earnings forecast

self selection and analyst coverage this paper examines the relation between analysts information about a stock s future prospects and their decisions to issue investment recommendations and earnings forecasts for that stock and the implications of this relation for the observed distribution of recommendations and earnings forecast errors articles in the financial press have long argued that analysts are reluctant to issue unfavorable investment information perhaps because they fear jeopardizing potential investment banking

the measurement of efficiency in life insurance estimates of a mixed normal gamma error model abstract this paper make three contributions to the literature on efficiency in financial services first it presents estimates of a mixed error cost frontier in which the variances of both the normal and gamma distributions can vary with firm size second it extends the literature on life insurance scale and product mix economies by incorporating and measuring x inefficiency estimates of x inefficiency range from 35 to 50 ray scale economies exist up to 15 billion in assets third comparisons of normal gamma estimates with other methods 3 thick frontier weighted least squares half normal distributions 3 demonstrate some of their pitfalls

measuring investors opinion divergence numerous proxies for divergence of investors opinions have been suggested in the empirical accounting and finance literatures i offer a new proxy constructed from proprietary limit order and market order data this allows me to capture additional information on investors private valuations proxies from the extant literature based on publicly available data do not contain such information given my new measure i ask which of the extant proxies correlates best with it in my regression analysis unexplained volume is the best proxy for opinion divergence conditioning on various firm specific and order specific characteristics generally does not change this conclusion the main exception is the sample of firms without ibes forecast dispersion data for which bid ask spread is the best proxy for opinion divergence factor analysis also suggests that unexplained volume is the preferred proxy for opinion divergence

pricing in microinsurance markets summary microinsurance markets have exhibited strong growth rates in recent years great parts of the industry are however challenged by fundamental issues of providing insurance products one of the most significant of which is pricing risk in this paper we provide a nontechnical analysis of insurance pricing problems and a review of the set of opportunities that can address some of the specific pricing constraints in microinsurance markets a key contribution of this paper is the investigation of conventional techniques as potential solutions for improving the pricing of insurance risk in microinsurance markets

biased forecasts or biased earnings the role of reported earnings in explaining apparent bias and over underreaction in analysts earnings forecasts the extensive literature that investigates whether analysts earnings forecasts are biased and or inefficient has produced conflicting evidence and no definitive answers to either question this paper shows how two relatively small but statistically influential asymmetries in the tail and the middle of distributions of analysts forecast errors can exaggerate or obscure evidence consistent with analyst bias and inefficiency leading to inconsistent inferences we identify an empirical link between firms recognition of unexpected accruals and the presence of the two asymmetries in distributions of forecast errors that suggests that firm reporting choices play an important role in determining analysts forecast errors r 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

why new issues and high accrual firms underperform the role of analysts credulity we find that analysts forecast errors are predicted by past accounting accruals adjustments to cash flows to obtain reported earnings among both equity issuers and nonissuers analysts are more optimistic for the subsequent four years for issuers reporting higher issue year accruals the predictive power is greater for discretionary accruals than nondiscretionary accruals and is independent of the presence of an underwriting affiliation predicted forecast errors from accruals significantly explain the long term underperformance of new issuers the predictability of forecast errors among nonissuers suggests that analysts credulity about accruals management more generally contributes to market inefficiency copyright 2002 oxford university press

determinants of the informativeness of analyst research abstract we examine cross sectional determinants of the informativeness of analyst research i e their effect on security prices controlling for endogeneity among the factors affecting informativeness analyst reports are more informative when the potential brokerage profits are higher e g high trading volume high volatility and high institutional ownership and lower when information processing costs e g more business segments are high we also find that the informativeness of analyst research and informativeness of financial statements are complements

analyst coverage and corporate tax aggressiveness abstract we examine the impact of analyst coverage on corporate tax aggressiveness to address endogeneity concerns we perform a difference in differences analysis using a setting which causes exogenous decreases in analyst coverage our tests identify a negative causal effect of analyst coverage on tax aggressiveness suggesting that higher analyst coverage constrains corporate tax aggressiveness further cross sectional variation tests find that this constraining effect on tax aggressiveness is more pronounced in firms with lower investor recognition and firms with more opaque information environments our results are consistent with the notion that higher analyst coverage increases the visibility of aggressive tax planning behavior as well as heightens analysts demand for more transparent information which in turn reduces tax aggressiveness

dynamic microlending under adverse selection can it rival group lending we derive an optimal lending contract in a two period adverse selection model with limited commitment on the borrower side the contract involves penalty interest rates after default and favorable rates after success under some conditions it also charges first time borrowers higher rates than repeat borrowers as in relationship lending because the lender is constrained to keep borrowing attractive while using revealed information to price for risk we compare the efficiency of a group lending contract of the kind popularized by the microcredit movement to the dynamic individual contract both types of contracts reveal the same information but the contracts face different constraints on using the information to improve risk pricing as a result either type of contract can lead to greater efficiency depending on specifics of the environment opening the possibility that dynamic lending has played a role comparable to that of group lending in the success of microcredit we also characterize the optimal dynamic group contract when both lending techniques are feasible and find that it combines both approaches but with varying emphases a recurrent theme is that in more marginal environments dynamic lending performs relatively better than and is prioritized over group lending we also discuss a number of extensions including spatially and serially correlated risk and the effect of competition

what factors drive analyst forecasts using survey data to judge how analyst forecasts are related to evaluations of companies industry competitiveness strategic choices and internal capabilities the authors found that analyst forecasts are associated with many of the factors that money managers rate as important in their assessments of analyst contributions they also found wide variation in ratings consistency across variables among analysts covering the same company on average consistency is higher for sell side analysts than for buy side analysts

the superiority and disciplining role of independent analysts abstract we show that although forecasts of independent analysts are less accurate ex post they yield forecast errors that are more strongly associated with abnormal stock returns this suggests that forecasts of independent analysts are superior to those of nonindependent analysts in representing ex ante market expectations we also show that forecasts of nonindependent analysts become more accurate and less biased and produce forecast errors more strongly associated with abnormal stock returns when independent analysts are following the same firms than when they are not this suggests that the presence of independent analysts disciplines the behavior of nonindependent analysts

insurance consumption and saving a dynamic analysis in continuous time this paper shows how the demand for non life insurance interacts with consumption and saving the analysis is set in continuous time using the maximum principle when insurance is actuarially fair the insurance and consumption decisions are separable with loaded premiums and alternatively without insurance optimal consumption is dynamically related to the growth rate of the loss probability and a growing loss probability generates precautionary saving with loaded premiums less than full insurance is demanded at each instant and optimal cover varies over time whether or not the loss probability is constant

the efficiency effects of categorical discrimination in the insurance industry recent public policy debate has focused concern on the equity dimensions of categorical discrimination based on sex age or race in insurance and similar markets we consider the efficiency effects of such discrimination and establish that costless imperfect categorization always enhances efficiency when categorization entails a nonnegligible resource cost however no unambiguous efficiency ranking of informational regimes is possible when categorization is costless we demonstrate that government having no better information than market participants can effect redistribution without assuming dictatorial control of the market implying that a market equilibrium with costless categorization is potentially pareto superior to one without it when categorization is costly however the market may categorize when pareto improvements are not possible

global dynamics in macroeconomics an overlapping generations example abstract in this paper we present some techniques used in the dynamical systems literature that let us characterize the stable and unstable manifolds of a given dynamical system as a result we can study how an economy behaves as it moves far away from the steady state in an environment where economic agents do not face uncertainty the underlying idea behind these methods is to compute the manifolds nonlocally by exploiting an invariance condition that analytically describes these manifolds in order to illustrate these techniques we present a general equilibrium model under two different policy regimes demonstrating that local and global dynamics of an economic system can be substantially different

rationality and analysts forecast bias this paper proposes and tests a quadratic loos utility function for modeling corporate earnings forecasting where financial analysts trade off bias to improve management access and forecast accuracy optimal forecasts with minimum expected error are optimistically biased and exhibit predictable cross sectional variation related to analyst and company characteristics empirical evidence from individual analyst forecasts is consistent with the model s predictions these results suggest that positive and predictable bias may be a rational property of optimal earnings forecasts prior studies using classical notions of unbiasedness may have prematurely dismissed analysts forecasts as being irrational or inaccurate

conflict of interest and the credibility of underwriter analyst recommendations brokerage analysts frequently comment on and sometimes recommend companies that their firms have recently taken public we show that stocks that underwriter analysts recommend perform more poorly than buy recommendations by unaffiliated brokers prior to at the time of and subsequent to the recommendation date we conclude that the recommendations by underwriter analysts show significant evidence of bias we show also that the market does not recognize the full extent of this bias the results suggest a potential conflict of interest inherent in the different functions that investment bankers perform

an analysis of the principal agent problem most analyses of the principal agent problem assume that the principal chooses an incentive scheme to maximize expected utility subject to the agent s utility being at a stationary point an important paper of mirrlees has shown that this approach is generally invalid we present an alternative procedure if the agent s preferences over income lotteries are independent of action we show that the optimal way of implementing an action by the agent can be found by solving a convex programming problem we use this to characterize the optimal incentive scheme and to analyze the determinants of the seriousness of an incentive problem

conflicts of interest and analyst behavior evidence from recent changes in regulation regulation fd made analysts less dependent on insider information and diminished analysts motives to inflate their forecasts the global research analyst settlement had an even bigger impact on analyst behavior the mean forecast bias declined significantly whereas the median forecast bias essentially disappeared these results are similar for all analysts

estimating risk preferences from deductible choice we develop a structural econometric model to estimate risk preferences from data on deductible choices in auto insurance contracts we account for adverse selection by modeling unobserved heterogeneity in both risk claim rate and risk aversion we find large and skewed heterogeneity in risk attitudes in addition women are more risk averse than men risk aversion exhibits a u shape with respect to age and proxies for income and wealth are positively associated with absolute risk aversion finally unobserved heterogeneity in risk aversion is greater than that of risk and as we illustrate has important implications for insurance pricing

financial analysts forecasts of earnings a better surrogate for market expectations abstract the specification of the market expectation of accounting numbers is a common feature of many empirical studies in accounting and finance givoly and lakonishok 1979 found that financial analysts forecasts have information content this study evaluates the quality of analysts forecasts as surrogates for the market expectation of earnings and compares it with that of prediction models commonly used in research results indicate that prediction errors of analysts are more closely associated with security price movements suggesting that analysts forecasts provide a better surrogate for market expectations than forecasts generated by time series models the study also identifies factors that might contribute to the performance of the financial analysts forecasts the broadness of the information set employed by analysts and to a lesser extent their reliance on information released after the end of the fiscal year appear to be important contributors to their performance

the evolution of cash transactions some implications for monetary policy this paper considers the implications for monetary policy of a decreasing demand for outside money it finds that even perpetual declines in the demand for base money pose no threat to the traditional methods employed for conducting monetary policy the effects of such reductions in the demand for central bank liabilities however do depend on how monetary policy is conducted four monetary policy regimes are analyzed with a policy of nominal interest rate targeting a secular decline in the volume of cash transactions unambiguously leads to accelerating inflation a policy of maintaining a fixed composition of government liabilities leads to accelerating decelerating inflation if agents have sufficiently high low levels of risk aversion inflation targeting produces falling nominal and real interest rates while a policy of fixing the rate of money growth can easily lead to indeterminacy and endogenous oscillation in interest rates it is argued that a policy of fixing the composition of government liabilities has several advantages if it is known that agents are not too risk averse and that the asymptotic demand for base money is small if this information is not known then interest rate or inflation targeting have an advantage because their consequences are not sensitive to such environmental features

improving analysts negative earnings forecasts in contrast to positive earnings forecasts the negative earnings forecasts of security analysts are grossly optimistic we adjusted negative earnings forecasts downward by varying amounts and evaluated forecast performance according to 1 forecast accuracy relative to the consensus 2 the frequency of being closer to actual earnings than the consensus and 3 the frequency with which adjusted forecasts underestimate actual earnings thereby jeopardizing the analyst s relations with corporate managers relative forecast accuracy and the probability of beating the consensus are improved without an inordinate increase in the probability of underestimating earnings by adjusting negative forecasts downward by a small amount

repeated insurance contracts and moral hazard abstract an attempt is made to account for the frequently observed phenomenon of insurance companies offering discounts to clients who possess a favorable record of past claims we argue that such discounts provide a mechanism which enables both insurer and insured to counteract the inefficiency which arises from moral hazard

earnings announcements and competing information abstract we investigate whether competing information primarily analyst reports reduces the usefulness of earnings announcements inconsistent with the view that information in analyst reports substitutes for earnings announcements we find a positive relation between absolute abnormal returns to the two types of disclosures this positive relation also characterizes subsequent period analyst reports relative to current period earnings announcements we also find that aggregate absolute reactions to both types of disclosures increased over 1986 1995 as a whole these results provide little support for the view that the informativeness of earnings announcements is eroded by competing information in the form of analyst reports

analysts reactions to earnings preannouncement strategies preannouncements of earnings tend to overstate negative or understate positive news which decreases the chance of a negative surprise when actual earnings is announced we conduct an experiment to investigate how experienced sell side analysts earnings forecasts are affected by preannouncements that either understate accurately state or overstate the magnitude of positive or negative total earnings news holding total earnings news constant we find that firms with negative positive total news receive the highest post earnings announcement forecasts of future earnings when the earlier preannouncement overstates understates the magnitude of the news these forecasts are consistent with the analysts perceptions about the firms future prospects but not their perceptions of management while analysts expect preannouncements to be lower than actual earnings they do not adjust their forecasts for these beliefs these insights into analysts responses have implications both for managers and analysts

tying life insurance and savings decisions a multiperiod expected utility approach abstract many whole life insurance contracts provide in addition to protection in case of death of the insured also a savings element the main purpose of this article is to provide an economic rationale for this practice two alternative models are offered in both models it is assumed that there is an asymmetry of information between the insurers and insureds where the know better their probability of death and hence adverse selection may cause a market failure it is shown that by offering several deliberately designed contracts tying savings and insurance the insurers can induce the insureds to self select that is insureds with higher probability of death will voluntarily choose different contracts than those with a lower probability of death and hence will reveal their probability of death to the insurers the problem of adverse selection is thus overcome in the first model contracts differ in the amount of insurance they specify and the amount of savings tied with insurance in the second model a multiperiod actually two period contract and a single period contract are offered the multiperiod contract specifies a savings element which will be received by the insured if he or she lives at the end of the second period it is shown that by the right choice of the return on the savings part insureds with lower probabilities of death will choose the multiperiod contract whereas insureds with higher probability of death will prefer two successive single period contracts again self selection is achieved these two models show that tie in arrangements of savings and insurance may help overcome the adverse selection problem and hence an economic rationale is provided for their existence the paper also examines the demand for life insurance and savings the sensitivity of the demand for these products to variations in key parameters is analyzed the differences between the sensitivity analyses results obtained when insurance and savings decisions are made separately and those obtained when these decisions are simultaneosly made are highlighted and explained

financial markets in development and the development of financial markets what is the relationship between markets and development it is argued that markets promote growth and that growth in turn encourages the formation of markets two models with endogenous market formation are presented to analyze this issue the first examines the role that financial markets banks and stock markets play in allocating funds to the highest valued use in the economic system it is shown that intermediation will arise under weak conditions the second focuses on the role that markets play in supporting specialization in economic activity the consequences of perfect competition in market formation are highlighted

asymmetric information and learning evidence from the automobile insurance market this paper tests the predictions of adverse selection models using data from the automobile insurance market i find that in contrast to what recent research suggests the evidence is consistent w

consumer lock in with asymmetric information abstract a two period version of the rothschild and stiglitz 1976 model of competitive screening in an insurance market is presented its features include repeat purchase of insurance among consumers no commitment among insurers or consumers asymmetric information among insurers about a consumer s accident history and state contingent contracts an equilibrium may exist in this model with full pooling in period one and consumer lock in in period two in such an equilibrium high risk consumers are experience rated and firms earn negative profits in period one and positive profits in period two

do analysts sacrifice forecast accuracy for informativeness analysts deviate from management guidance to correct for perceived earnings management although the deviations reduce forecast accuracy they improve forecast informativeness bringing the forecasts closer to the unmanaged earnings and reducing accruals mispricing an implicit assumption in the literature is that more accurate analyst forecasts i e estimates that are closer to the reported earnings are better for investors and that analysts objective is to forecast the reported managed earnings accurately our analysis suggests that this is not necessarily the case and that an inaccurate forecast can actually be more informative than an accurate one prior studies on analysts deviations from management guidance focus on analysts incentives to issue estimates that managers can beat these studies implicitly assume that analysts side with management against the interests of their clients our analysis indicates that analysts could also deviate from management guidance to provide useful valuation