The domain of multi level forecast combination is a challenging new domain containing a large potential for forecast improvements. This thesis presents a theoretical and experimental analysis of different types of forecast diversification on forecast error covariances and resulting combined forecast quality. Three types of diversification are used: (a) diversification concerning the level of le...

the purpose of this study is to examine the possible impact of value systems on earnings management in france, tunisia and canada. cultural values include power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity and long-term orientation. the cross-cultural study uses the method of structural equations trough lisrel approach. the examination covers the period between 2003 and 2009. fin...

Behavioral Finance aims to explain empirical anomalies by introducing investor psychology as a determinant of asset pricing. This study provides strong evidence that anomalous stock price behavior following earnings announcements is due to a representativeness bias. It investigates current and past earnings surprises and subsequent market reaction for listed US companies over the period 1983-19...

We use panel data to analyze the determinants of speaking  uency and wages of immigrants. Our model takes account of two problems that may bias OLS estimates of the impact of speaking  uency on earnings. First, subjective variables on an ordinal discrete scale, such as self-reported language ability, can suffer from misclassiŽ cation errors. The model decomposes misclassiŽ cation errors into ...

This paper describes a theoretical study of forecast errors. First, we formally define forecast errors with different rationales, derive several relationships among them, and prove a heuristic formula proposed by Mark Sower.1 Then we study the effects of a systematic bias on the forecast errors. Finally, we extend our study to the situations where correlations across product demands and time ef...

In order to obtain SEO (Secondary Equity Offering) qualification, china listed companies would do different levels of earnings management centering on accounting earnings indicators. While previous researches on earnings management are mainly focused on enterprise management authorities’ accruals manipulation. In fact, in order to avoid losses, the user of statements would pay more attention to...

We investigate how managerial ability affects the intentional distortion of financial statements (earnings management). On the one hand, better managers receive a compensation premium for their perceived ability, and to the extent that earnings management would tarnish their reputations, we expect them to manage earnings less. On the other hand, better managers may be more able to extract rents...

We develop a stock return-predictive measure based on an efficient aggregation of the portfolio holdings of all actively managed U.S. domestic equity mutual funds, and use this model to study the source of fund managers’ stock-selection abilities. This “generalized-inverse alpha” (GIA) approach reveals differences in the ability of managers to predict firms’ future earnings from fundamental res...

This paper provides evidence that analysts who made a sequence of accurate predictions of earnings relative to the median forecast tend to be relatively more inaccurate and more out of consensus in their subsequent earnings prediction. This phenomenon is economically and statistically meaningful. The results are robust to different estimation techniques and different control variables. Our find...

This paper is about income and poverty dynamics and their socioeconomic correlates. The first half of the paper aims to establish some of the salient facts for Britain, applying the pioneering methods of Bane and Ellwood (1986). Important for poverty dynamics are changes in labour earnings from persons other than the household head, changes in non-labour income (including benefits), and changes...