Recent research results indicate a market premium for firms that met or beat analysts' forecasts. We find evidence consistent with these results. More important, however, we find a market premium for firms that met or beat time-series forecasts, and also the highest market premium for firms that met or beat both analysts' and time-series forecasts, relative to firms that met or beat one or neither forecast. In fact, there is no premium for firms that met or beat only analysts' or only time-series forecasts. Investors seem to consider both analysts' and time-series forecasts jointly, with the act of meeting or beating both forecasts providing the most credible signal of superior future financial performance. This 'credibility' premium to firms that met or beat time-series forecasts (as proxied for by the Foster model, 1977) is in addition to the premium for meeting or beating analysts' forecasts. The premium is supported by assessments of future financial performance over the two subsequent years and by tests of the predictability of earnings for the following quarter. Finally, we find that abnormal trading was greatest when both forecasts were met or beaten, compared to when only one or the other or neither forecast was met or beaten. This is further evidence that investors view the meeting or beating of both forecasts as the strongest signal of enhanced credibility in reported earnings.

This book is a study of earnings management, aimed at scholars and professionals in accounting, finance, economics, and law. The authors address research questions including: Why are earnings so important that firms feel compelled to manipulate them? What set of circumstances will induce earnings management? How will the interaction among management, boards of directors, investors, employees, suppliers, customers and regulators affect earnings management? How to design empirical research addressing earnings management? What are the limitations and strengths of current empirical models?

Preface; The Role of Revenues and Costs in CEO Compensation; The Importance of Intellectual Capital Reporting: Perspectives from Finance Professionals; Has Regulation Changed the Market's Reward for Meeting or Beating Expectations?; Reaction of the Brazilian Stock Market to Positive and Negative Shocks; Earnings Management to Meet Earnings Benchmarks: Evidence from Japan; Audit in Ukraine; Auditor Reputation and Auditor Independence: Evidence from an Emerging Market; Trends of the Returns-Earnings Associations Over the Last Three Decades; Managers' Discretionary Behaviour, Earnings Management and Corporate Governance: An Empirical International Analysis; Index.

The size of the equity risk premium remains an unanswered question in the accounting and finance literature. This study proposes a new approach to reverse-engineer the equity risk premium, distinct from prior research, in that it does not rely on analysts' forecasts to proxy for the market's earnings expectations. That I instead use time-series earnings forecasts allows an investigation of the equity risk premium across a broader cross-section of firms, including smaller firms that are not covered by analysts. This study finds that risk premia are significantly higher for firms not followed by analysts. This suggests that studies requiring analysts' earnings forecasts to estimate the equity risk premium have likely underestimated its overall level. Additional validity tests on my firm- and year-specific risk premium estimates reveal that these estimates consistently and predictably relate to multiple measures of risk, particularly for firms not followed by analysts.

Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.