This paper projects lifetime Social Security earnings until retirement using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to Social Security records of annual earnings from 1951 through 1993. We first develop, estimate and test gender-specific multiple regression models of ten-year earnings intervals using the matched 1984 SIPP panel. We find strong relationships pred...

A number of articles have explored analysts' earnings estimates, analysts' forecasting ability and the reaction of stock prices to earnings announcements. The concern of this paper is the group of stocks whose earnings announcements constitute positive "earnings surprise" given a consensus of analysts' expected earnings. The consensus derives from a twenty quarter, seasonally adjusted earnings ...

In this paper I decompose the monthly earnings of male full-time employees into their permanent and transitory components, using the British Household Panel Study for the period 1991-95. Cross-section evidence points at a positive message: the increasing earnings inequality trend of the 1980s is interrupted. Notwithstanding this, I find that a substantial proportion of individual earnings diffe...

Earnings non-response in household surveys is widespread, yet there is limited evidence on whether and how non-response bias affects measured earnings. This paper examines the patterns and consequences of non-response using internal Current Population Survey (CPS ASEC) individual records matched to administrative SSA data on earnings for calendar years 2005-2010. Our findings include the follow...

To investigate how the possibility of earnings manipulation affects managerial compensation contracts, we study a two period agency setting in which a firm’s manager can engage in “window dressing” activities to manipulate reported accounting earnings. Earnings manipulation boosts the reported earnings in one period at the expense of the reported earnings in the other period. We show that the p...

Earnings Instability and Earnings Inequality in Urban China: 1989–2006 This paper investigates the evolution of earnings inequality in urban China from 1989 to 2006. After decomposing the variance of log of earnings into transitory and permanent two parts, we find that both components are important contributors to the total variance of earnings. We also find that the share of the transitory par...

We present new evidence on the evolution of black-white earnings differences among all men, including both workers and nonworkers. We study two measures: (i) the level earnings gap the racial earnings difference at a given quantile; and (ii) the earnings rank gap the difference between a black man’s percentile in the black earnings distribution and the position he would hold in the white earnin...

Earnings manipulation has become a widespread practice for US corporations. However, most studies in the literature focus on whether certain incentives would facilitate managers to manipulate earnings and there has been little evidence documenting the consequences of earnings manipulation. This paper fills this gap by examining how current accruals affect future earnings (the accrual effect) an...