Search

We find that firm-level investment is negatively related to the likelihood of meeting or beating analysts' short-term EPS forecasts. In a 35-year panel dataset of US based companies, we find evidence that suggests firms with the best growth opportunities, opaque firms, and firms with higher than usual bonus compensation, are the ones to alter investment in order to beat benchmarks. Utilizing the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley as a natural experiment we find that firms trade off accruals-based earnings management in lieu of investment cuts. Results are robust to a number of covariates, and endogeneity or reverse causality does not seem to drive our inferences. This study suggests that, consistent with survey results from Graham, Harvey, and Rajgopal [2005. "The Economic Implications of Corporate Financial Reporting." Journal of Accounting and Economics 40: 3–73], managers may reduce or delay corporate investment to meet or beat short-term earnings benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study whether R&D-intensive firms earn superior stock returns compared to matched size and book-to-market portfolios across several financial markets in Europe. Mispricing can arise if investors are not able to correctly estimate the long-term benefits of R&D investment or whether R&D firms are more risky than others. The results confirm that more innovative firms can earn future excess returns. Stocks listed on continental Europe markets and operating in high-tech sectors are more prone to undervaluation. This can be caused in the first case by information asymmetries that are more severe in bank-based countries. No evidence is found for a different risk pattern of R&D-intensive stocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an international Thomson Reuters Datastream database, where size coverage is unusually wide and data errors have been reduced to a low level, we show that some specification decisions, and especially those related to size, may have a significant impact on asset-pricing test results. We also show that, in data with wider coverage with respect to size, the Fama and French factor portfolios need to be adjusted and their number increased. Specifically, (i) standard asset-pricing models leave pricing errors for the 10% smallest stocks, and (ii) two additional risk factors (i.e. one micro-stock factor and one extreme book-to-market factor) are needed to capture this mispricing. This holds both in USA and international data. Further research is needed to measure the separate relevance of the possible economic interpretations and to identify more economic explanations for the additional risks associated with the smallest stocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is substantial evidence to suggest that the book-to-market (BM) ratio is an important factor in explaining stock market returns. Its role has proved difficult to isolate, however, due to statistical problems in its construction and to its observational equivalence to a number of risk and behavioural explanations. In addition, now widely recognised complex behaviour in financial markets has called into question modelling approaches that are limited in their ability to uncover relationships that are possibly masked during financial crises, for example. As one response, our research explores the value of a newly applied technique which examines the topological properties of minimum spanning trees as applied to both the BM ratio and market returns. Our intention is to identify and report investment signals as determined by the BM ratio and to assess the relationships of these signals to returns outcomes. The approach enables highly nonlinear behaviour to be addressed and the relationships we set out to capture to be reported in novel ways. We motivate and evidence a previously unreported role for BM as an investment signal which is effective over varying stock market conditions, including the financial crisis that began in 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]