the effect of experience on security analyst underreaction abstract we examine if analysts more fully incorporate prior earnings and returns information in their current quarter forecasts as their experience following a firm increases we measure analyst firm specific forecasting experience as the number of prior quarters for which the analyst has issued an earnings forecast for the firm we find that analysts underreact to prior earnings information less as their experience increases suggesting one reason why analysts become more accurate with experience

analyst responsiveness and the post earnings announcement drift abstract this study examines the responsiveness of analyst forecasts to current earnings announcements the results show considerable cross sectional variation in analyst responsiveness and suggest that this variation is related to the costs and benefits associated with prompt forecast revisions more importantly this study finds that with responsive forecast revisions more of the market reaction takes place in the event window and less in the drift window suggesting that analyst responsiveness mitigates the post earnings announcement drift and facilitates market efficiency

following the leader a study of individual analysts earnings forecasts abstract this paper develops and tests procedures for ranking the performance of security analysts based on the timeliness of their earnings forecasts the abnormal trading volume associated with these forecasts and forecast accuracy our framework provides an objective assessment of analyst quality that differs from the standard approach which uses survey evidence to rate analysts we find that lead analysts identified by our measure of forecast timeliness have a greater impact on stock prices than follower analysts further we find that performance rankings based on forecast timeliness are more informative than rankings based on abnormal trading volume and forecast accuracy we also present evidence that analyst s forecast revisions are correlated with recent stock price performance suggesting that security analysts use publicly available information to revise their earnings forecasts

cyclical quality adjustment in the labor market 1 introductionthe u s unemployment rate fell to very low levels during the 1990s even more impressively the unemployment rate for minorities and less educated individuals fell disproportionately convergence of relative unemployment rates in expansions and divergence in recessions has been a feature of the u s economy over the last 30 years there are many possible reasons for this feature for example if the costs of hiring and firing less skilled labor are low one would expect these individuals to have very procyclical employment in this paper i explore an alternative model when there is an excess supply of labor high skilled people take jobs that would normally be occupied by less skilled people in expansions the process reverses with less skilled workers getting access to jobs that they would normally not attain i refer to this process as cyclical quality adjustment reder 1955 p 834 was one of the first to discuss how hiring standards adjust to business cycle conditions quality variations in labor markets arise through upgrading and downgrading of members of the labor force relative to the jobs they are to fill when applicants become scarce employers tend to lower the minimum standards upon which they insist as a condition for hiring a worker to fill a particular job and vice versa when applicants become plentiful since then many papers have developed this idea theoretically and many economic commentators appear to share this view of the labor market for example the economic report of the president states that a strong labor market is particularly important to less advantaged groups in the labor market such as workers with less education younger workers racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants when employers find it hard to fill vacancies they are more willing to hire and train workers whom they might pass over when they have fewer openings and an abundance of applicants council of economic advisors 1999 p 103 likewise the expansion during the 1990s spawned many newspaper articles about the improvement in the types of jobs available to less skilled applicants however there is little systematic empirical work about changes in job assignment in the united states over the business cycle the empirical work in this paper seeks to redress this situation cyclical assignment changes are important for many reasons as mentioned earlier job upgrading is a potential explanation for the greater cyclical variation of employment experienced by less skilled workers it is well known that the unemployment rates of less skilled individuals and minorities are more countercyclical relative to more skilled individuals clark and summers 1981 kydland 1984 keane and prasad 1993 hoynes 1999 the standard explanation for this effect is that low ability workers are more likely to be laid off in downturns because training and hiring costs are lower for these workers no commensurate attention has been paid to the issue of how the decision of who to hire changes over the business cycle however assignment models present a natural explanation for the greater procyclicality of employment of the less skilled both the adjustment cost hypothesis and the upgrading hypothesis imply that less skilled workers will have more procyclical employment empirically they are distinguishable because the upgrading explanation implies that jobs obtained by comparable workers should vary systematically over the cycle the adjustment cost hypothesis relates to the composition of those whose jobs are terminated second these mechanisms suggest a reason why wages are particularly procyclical for job changers recent studies using panel data have indicated that the wages of job starters are much more procyclical than the wages of workers who do not change jobs researchers have suggested various explanations for this result beaudry and dinardo 1991 and macleod and malcomson 1993 present contracting models in which the wages of job starters depend on the state of the labor market when they join the firm

international diversification of investments in climate change mitigation abstract numerous studies have shown that international emissions trading can significantly lower the costs of greenhouse gas ghg abatement economic models however ignore the substantial economic and political risks associated with investments in developing countries where according to these models a large share of global ghg abatement takes place we use a mean variance approach to compute international portfolios of carbon abatement activities that balance low abatement costs and investment risks expected returns are derived from marginal abatement cost curves the volatility of the growth rate of regional carbon dioxide emissions is used as an indicator of investment risk we find first that well diversified portfolios can significantly reduce investment risks second the least risk portfolio is distinct from the cost efficient allocation based on equalization of marginal abatement costs and much more costly to implement this indicates that existing models which neglect investment risks overestimate the cost savings due to international emissions trading

real wages over the business cycle evidence from panel data one topic on which keynes did not disagree with classical economists was the cyclical behavior of real wages keynes 1936 as well as various classical writers predicted that real wages should move countercyclically quoting the general theory p 17 in general an increase in employment can only occur through the accompaniment of a decline in real wages thus i am not disputing this vital fact which the classical economists have rightly asserted as indefeasible this prediction is based on the premise of competition and a given short run capital stock increases in employment then correspond to more intensive use of capital and through diminishing product lower real wages for this reason evidence by dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 that real wages move procyclically was viewed as paradoxical both dunlop and tarshis based their findings on an observed positive correlation between real and money wages which given the procyclical movement of money wages implies a positive correlation between

carbon abatement and international spillovers carbon abatement policies in large open economies affect both the allocation of domestic resources and international market prices a change in international prices implies an indirect secondary burden or benefit for all trading countries based on simulations with a large scale computable general equilibrium model of global trade and energy use we show that international spillovers have important welfare implications for carbon abatement policies designed to meet exogenous emission reduction targets we present a decomposition of the total welfare effect of carbon abatement policies into a primary domestic market effect at constant international prices and a secondary international spillover impact as a result of changes in international prices this decomposition reveals the extent to which domestic abatement costs are increased or decreased as a result of the impact of carbon abatement on international prices

economic implications of using a mean var model for portfolio selection a comparison with mean variance analysis abstract we relate value at risk var to mean variance analysis and examine the economic implications of using a mean var model for portfolio selection when comparing two mean variance efficient portfolios the higher variance portfolio might have less var consequently an efficient portfolio that globally minimizes var may not exist surprisingly we show that it is plausible for certain risk averse agents to end up selecting portfolios with larger standard deviations if they switch from using variance to var as a measure of risk therefore regulators should be aware that var is not an unqualified improvement over variance as a measure of risk

terrorist attacks analyst sentiment and earnings forecasts we examine whether exogenous and extremely negative events such as terrorist attacks and mass shootings influence the sentiment and forecasts of sell side equity analysts we find that analysts w

analyst characteristics timing of forecast revisions and analyst forecasting ability abstract we first examine whether analysts with certain characteristics that prior research has identified are related to superior forecasting ability systematically time their forecast revisions later in the fiscal quarter we then examine whether this superior ability persists after controlling for the timing advantage by using relative forecast error a measure that largely eliminates the timing advantage of recent forecasts using a sample of quarterly earnings forecast revisions over the 20 year period from 1990 to 2009 we find that analysts with more firm specific and general experience and more accurate prior period forecasts analysts employed by larger brokerage firms and analysts who follow fewer industries and companies tend to revise forecasts later in the quarter we also find that analyst characteristics that are positively correlated with revision timing are negatively related to relative forecast errors these results are consistent with analyst characteristics being useful proxies for analyst forecasting ability and analysts with greater ability revising forecasts later in the quarter

clean development investments an incentive compatible cge modeling framework the clean development mechanism established under the kyoto protocol allows industrialized annex i countries to offset part of their domestic emissions by investing in emissions reduction projects in developing non annex i countries computable general equilibrium analysis of the clean development mechanism s impacts so far mimics the clean development mechanism as a sector emissions trading scheme thereby overstating its potential to save climate change mitigation costs this study develops a novel approach that represents the clean development mechanism more realistically by compensating clean development mechanism implementing sectors for additional abatement cost and by endogenizing clean development mechanism credits as a function of investment compared with previous representations the proposed approach is more consistent in its incentive structure and investment characteristics at the sector level an empirical application of the new methodology demonstrates that the economy wide cost savings from the clean development mechanism tend to be lower than suggested by conventional modeling approaches while clean development mechanism implementing sectors do not lose in output

market power and hot air in international emissions trading the impacts of us withdrawal from the kyoto protocol ten years after the initial climate change convention from rio in 1992 the industrialized world is finally likely to ratify the kyoto protocol which will impose legally binding greenhouse gas emission reductions on the developed world however the kyoto protocol will enter into force without the usa which withdrew under president bush in march 2001 accounting for hot air and market power of the former soviet union on emission permit markets it is shown that us withdrawal has important consequences on environmental effectiveness compliance costs and excess costs of market power under the kyoto protocol non compliance of the usa implies a dramatic decrease in environmental effectiveness as well as compliance costs of oecd countries whereas the former soviet union and transitional economies in eastern europe suffer from a huge decline in permit sales revenues excess costs of market power in permit trade increase in relative terms but decline substantially in absolute terms due to us withdrawal pol

do weather induced moods affect the processing of earnings news we investigate whether unpleasant environmental conditions affect stock market participants responses to information events we draw from psychology research to develop a new prediction that weather induced negative moods reduce market participants activity levels exploiting geographic variation in equity analysts locations we find compelling evidence that analysts experiencing unpleasant weather are slower or less likely to respond to an earnings announcement relative to analysts responding to the same announcement but experiencing pleasant weather price association tests find evidence consistent with reduced activity due to weather induced moods delaying equilibrium price adjustments following earnings announcements we also use our analyst based research design to re examine an existing prediction that unpleasant weather induces investor pessimism and find evidence of both analyst pessimism and reduced activity in the presence of unpleasant weather together our study provides new evidence that both extends and reaffirms findings of a relation between unpleasant weather and market activities and contributes to the broader psychology and economics literature on the impact of weather induced mood on labor productivity this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

the timing and value of forecast and recommendation revisions abstract this paper evaluates the information content of analysts one quarter ahead earnings forecast revisions and recommendation revisions at various points in event time relative to earnings announcement dates across three sets of tests we find that the revisions are least informative in the week after earnings announcements and that the information content of revisions generally increases over event time we find a sharp increase in the information content of upward forecast revisions and recommendation upgrades in the week before earnings announcements but we do not find a similar increase for downward revisions or for recommendation downgrades

transaction costs and tradeable permits abstract tradeable permit systems are at the center of current interest and activity in market based reforms of environmental policy because these systems can offer significant advantages over conventional approaches to pollution control unfortunately claims made for their relative cost effectiveness have often been exaggerated transaction costs which may be significant in these markets reduce trading levels and increase abatement costs in some cases equilibrium permit allocations and hence aggregate control costs are sensitive to initial permit distributions providing an efficiency justification for politicians typical focus on initial allocations

the timing of and incentives for annual earnings forecasts near interim earnings announcements abstract security analysts anticipate and respond to interim earnings announcements when they revise their annual earnings forecasts analysts avoid revising for two weeks before an interim announcement and more frequently revise immediately after an announcement as expected revision activity after an interim announcement is greater if absolute unexpected interim earnings are larger if there are more competing analysts and if unexpected interim earnings are negative unexpectedly analysts are reluctant to revise their forecasts early in the fiscal year these findings carry implications for research designs that use analyst forecasts

why have aggregate skilled hours become so cyclical since the mid 1980 s this paper documents and discusses a dramatic change in the cyclical behavior of aggregate hours worked by individuals with a college degree skilled workers since the mid 1980 s using the cps outgoing rotation data set for the period 1979 1 2003 4 we find that the volatility of aggregate skilled hours relative to the volatility of gdp has nearly tripled since 1984 in contrast the cyclical properties of unskilled hours have remained essentially unchanged we evaluate the extent to which a simple supply demand model for skilled and unskilled labor with capital skill complementarity in production can help explain this stylized fact within this framework we identify three effects which would lead to an increase in the relative volatility of skilled hours i a reduction in the degree of capital skill complementarity ii a reduction in the absolute volatility of gdp and unskilled hours and iii an increase in the level of capital equipment relative to skilled labor we provide empirical evidence in support of each of these effects our conclusion is that these three mechanisms can jointly explain about sixty percent of the observed increase in the relative volatility of skilled labor the reduction in the degree of capital skill complementarity contributes the most to this result

climate policy induced investments in developing countries the implications of investment risks international climate policy has assigned the leading role in emissions abatement to the industrialized countries while developing countries remain uncommitted to binding emission reduction targets however cooperation between the industrialized and the developing world through joint implementation of emission abatement promises substantial economic gains to both parties in this context the policy debate on joint implementation has addressed the question of how investment risks to project based emission crediting between industrialized countries and developing countries affect the magnitude and distribution of such gains in our quantitative analysis we find that the incorporation of country specific investment risks induces rather small changes vis a vis a situation where investment risks are neglected only if investors go for high safety of returns is there a distinct decline in the overall volume of emission crediting and the associated total economic benefits while the welfare effects of risk incorporation for industrialized countries are unequivocally negative the implications across developing countries are ambiguous whereas low risk developing countries attract higher project volumes and benefit from higher effective prices per emission credit compared to a reference scenario without risk the opposite applies to high risk countries sensitivity analysis with respect to higher risk estimates show that shifts in the comparative advantage of emission abatement against high risk countries may become dramatic as only very low cost mitigation projects will be realized driving down the country s benefits from emission crediting to the advantage of low risk developing countries this result is supported by empirical evidence on regional imbalances of activities implemented jointly under the pilot phase of the kyoto protocol

contracts job experience and cyclical labor market adjustments longitudinal estimates of the variability of individual wages hours and weeks worked over the course of changing demand states are provided for all workers generally and for workers of varied levels of job experience emphasis is placed on that part of job experience represented as years on current job a commonly used proxy for the magnitude of firm specific skills interpretation of resulting estimates in the context of the labor market contracting literature is attempted generally significant procyclical patterns are found for real weekly wages weekly hours and weeks worked the extent of weekly wage variability is much greater than is generally suggested in the literature furthermore workers with greater tenure exhibit greater cyclical wage and hours variability and less weeks variability finally empirical distinctions are drawn separately for white collar and blue collar as well as union and nonunion workers

task assignment over the business cycle in this article i evaluate the hypothesis that firms respond to negative demand shocks by assigning workers to tasks that require less skill than the tasks they normally carry out using changes in employment in state industry cells as a measure of demand conditions facing individual firms i provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis furthermore the skill requirements of the tasks carried out by workers are procyclical the results are consistent with a specific capital model where employers move workers between tasks so that layoffs are concentrated on workers with low levels of firm specific human capital

do security analysts improve their performance with experience we investigate if sell side security analysts generate more accurate quarterly earnings forecasts and more profitable stock recommendations as their experience following a specific firm increases we measure firmspecific experience as the number of prior quarters for which the analyst has issued an earnings forecast for the firm if analysts improve their forecasting performance with repetition as suggested by the learning by doing lbd model an analyst s earnings forecasts will become more accurate with experience prior empirical work provides mixed evidence on whether analysts exhibit individual forecasting performance differences e g butler and

skill heterogeneity and the business cycle this paper extends the real business cycle framework to incorporate ex ante skill heterogeneity among workers consistent with the empirical evidence skilled and unskilled workers in the model face the same degree of cyclical variation in real wages although unskilled workers are subject to substantially higher procyclical variation in employment systematic cyclical changes in the average skill level of employed workers are shown to induce bias in standard aggregate measures of cyclical variation in the labour input productivity and the real wage the introduction of skill heterogeneity improves the model s ability to match the empirical correlation between total hours and the real wage but the correlation between total hours and labour productivity remains higher than it does in the data

joint implementation strategic reactions and possible remedies this paper investigates the promising proposal of joint implementation ji to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions this was ultimately the only concrete outcome of the conference on climate change in berlin albeit restricted to a pilot phase the basic idea given the public s awareness of global warming sounds economically plausible the industrialized countries the only ones required to stabilize and lower carbon emissions can search for cheaper reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries and economies in transition however this proposal leads to strategic reactions by developing countries reinforced by the fact that this cheating coincides with the interest of the industrialized country in short this proposal will lead to cheating given asymmetric information and will thus produce largely faked reductions in emissions on the constructive side an efficient mechanism retaining the spirit of ji is derived which deters strategic reactions this differs from a usual principal agent problem through an additional hierarchical layer a global authority e g the conference of parties on climate change an industrialized country and a developing country the unavoidable loss that is even associated with an optimal scheme due to strategic behavioural reality the first best optimum is unattainable except at the top leads of course to much less glamorous predictions in emission reductions moreover the implicit subsidization scheme focuses and favours on already efficient partners

heterogeneous workers and occupations inequality unemployment and crowding out this article attempts to determine the factors behind the cyclical behavior of the skill premium using the current population survey outgoing rotation group the premium is found uncorrelated with contemporaneous output and lags the business cycle to account for this observation the article develops a framework that features search frictions agents are either high or low educated and firms post two types of vacancies the complex which can be matched with the high educated and the simple which can be matched with the high and the low educated on the job search for a complex occupation is undertaken by the high educated in simple occupations an aggregate technological shock induces firms to increase their posting of simple and complex vacancies as complex vacancies are more costly to create than simple ones the increase in the former lags that of the latter as the number of complex vacancies increases with a lag on the job search intensity increases on the expense of the hours of work of the high educated in simple occupations on the other hand the total hours of the high educated in complex occupations increases this lagged cyclical increase in the labor input of the high educated in complex occupations causes the skill premium to increase with a lag as well

spatial dynamics and heterogeneity in the cyclicality of real wages neither the issue of how local and aggregate labor markets interact over time nor the issue of how heterogeneity by education race and other factors interacts with these spatial dynamics has prev

inefficiency in analysts earnings forecasts systematic misreaction or systematic optimism a rational analysis of analyst behavior predicts that analysts immediately and without bias incorporate information into their forecasts several studies document analysts tendency to systematically underreact to information underreaction is inconsistent with rationality other studies indicate that analysts systematically overreact to new information or that they are systematically optimistic this study discriminates between these three hypotheses by examining the interaction between the nature of information and the type of reaction by analysts the evidence indicates that analysts underreact to negative information but overreact to positive information these results are consistent with systematic optimism in response to information the literature on financial analysts defines the phrase forecast inefficiency to mean forecasts that fail to accurately incorporate new information on a timely basis and or that are biased these forecasts have also been described as irrational or suboptimal prior studies report inefficiency in analysts forecasts finding that they are upwardly biased and inaccurately reflect available information some studies conclude from this that analysts underreact to information other studies conclude that analysts overreact if markets treat analysts forecasts as both rational and statistically optimal then inefficient forecasts could have important implications for the efficiency of pricing in securities markets in this paper we reexamine the apparent tendency of analysts to misinterpret earnings information the intent of this study is to discriminate between three hypotheses 1 that analysts systematically underreact to new earnings information 2 that analysts systematically overreact to new earnings information and 3 that analysts are systematically optimistic in their reactions for hypotheses 1 and 2 the direction of the misinterpretation i e underor overreaction is independent of the nature of the information received in contrast hypothesis 3 predicts that analysts are optimistic in interpreting

can the risks of the kyoto mechanisms be reduced through portfolio diversification evidence from the swedish aij program through joint implementationand the clean development mechanism reductionsof greenhouse gas emissions achieved abroad canbe credited to domestic firms however thetechnical economic and political risksinvolved may prevent the private sector frominvesting in such projects this paperdescribes three types of risks which emissionreduction projects are exposed to eleven pilotprojects carried out under the activitiesimplemented jointly aij program and financedby sweden are evaluated actual project costsare found to exceed projected costs in allcases annual emission reductions also deviatefrom their expected values and vary stronglyover time supporting the hypothesis that suchprojects are risky business the riskmanagement tool portfolio diversification isapplied to a sample of swedish aij projects the results indicate that diversification canreduce the risks of greenhouse gas mitigationprojects significantly thus carbon funds area promising way of lowering the risks of thekyoto mechanisms for private sector investors