Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(220)
- Faculty Publications (57)
- Article
Cultural Diversity on Wall Street: Evidence from Consensus Earnings Forecasts
By: Kenneth Merkley, Roni Michaely and Joseph Pacelli
We examine how cultural differences among agents influence the aggregate outcome of a common forecasting task. Using both exogenous shocks to sell-side analyst diversity and panel regression methods, we find that increases in analyst cultural diversity positively... View Details
- January 2019
- Article
Bubbles for Fama
By: Robin Greenwood, Andrei Shleifer and Yang You
We evaluate Eugene Fama's claim that stock prices do not exhibit price bubbles. Based on U.S. industry returns 1926–2014 and international sector returns 1985–2014, we present four findings: (1) Fama is correct in that a sharp price increase of an industry portfolio... View Details
Keywords: Bubble; Market Efficiency; Predictability; Price Bubble; Stocks; Price; Forecasting and Prediction
- 2025
- Working Paper
Government-Brokerage Analysts and Market Stabilization: Evidence from China
By: Sheng Cao, Xianjie He, Charles C.Y. Wang and Huifang Yin
We show analysts at government-controlled brokerage firms serve as a market stabilization tool
in China. Using earnings forecasts from 2005–2019, we find government-brokerage analysts
issue relatively more optimistic—yet less accurate and timely—forecasts during... View Details
- April–May 2017
- Article
Career Concerns of Banking Analysts
By: Joanne Horton, George Serafeim and Shan Wu
We study how career concerns influence banking analysts' forecasts and how their forecasting behavior benefits both them and bank managers. We show that banking analysts issue early in the year relatively more optimistic and later in the year more pessimistic forecasts... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Learning by Doing: The Value of Experience and the Origins of Skill for Mutual Fund Managers
By: Elisabeth Kempf, Alberto Manconi and Oliver Spalt
Learning by doing matters for professional investors. We develop a new methodology to show that mutual fund managers outperform in industries where they have obtained experience on the job. The key to our identification strategy is that we look "inside" funds and... View Details
- January 2017
- Article
Being Surprised by the Unsurprising: Earnings Seasonality and Stock Returns
By: Tom Y. Chang, Samuel M. Hartzmark, David H. Solomon and Eugene F. Soltes
We present evidence consistent with markets failing to properly price information in seasonal earnings patterns. Firms with historically larger earnings in one quarter of the year (“positive seasonality quarters”) have higher returns when those earnings are usually... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
The Probability of Rare Disasters: Estimation and Implications
By: Emil Siriwardane
I analyze a rare disasters economy that yields a measure of the risk neutral probability of a macroeconomic disaster, p*t. A large panel of options data provides strong evidence that p*t is the single factor driving option-implied jump risk measures in the cross... View Details
- June 2015
- Supplement
Generating Higher Value at IBM (A): EPS Forecasting Model
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Scott Mayfield
This case analyzes IBM's financial performance and its capital allocation decisions over a 10-year period from 2004-2013, during which IBM returned more than $140B to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. During this time, CEO Sam... View Details
- Article
Waves in Ship Prices and Investment
By: Robin Greenwood and Samuel G. Hanson
We study the link between investment boom and bust cycles and returns on capital in the dry bulk shipping industry. We show that high current ship earnings are associated with high used ship prices and heightened industry investment in new ships, but forecast low... View Details
- October 2014
- Case
Honeywell and the Great Recession (A)
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Susan J. Winterberg
CEO Dave Cote spent six years turning around an ailing Honeywell and in 2008 Cote and his team face a new challenge: how to respond to the Great Recession. Cote does not want to give up the gains he made in transforming and unifying Honeywell. With a fall-off in... View Details
- October 2014
- Supplement
Honeywell and the Great Recession: The Economic Recovery (B)
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Susan J. Winterberg
Five years after the Great Recession, Honeywell's CEO Dave Cote and his executive team reflect on the choices they made to manage costs and earnings forecasts during that uncertain time. They discuss which cost cutting measures they decided to take and their personal... View Details
- June 18, 2014
- Blog Post
How to Kill Quarterly Earnings Guidance
By: Gabriel Karageorgiou, Daniela Saltzman and George Serafeim
- June 2014
- Supplement
Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (B)
By: Mihir Desai and Elizabeth A. Meyer
This case is meant to accompany Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (A) and details the results of Apple's Q2 2013 earnings call. View Details
Keywords: Apple; Steve Jobs; Forecast; Forecasting; Forecasting And Prediction; Shareholder Activism; Share Repurchase; Dividends; Financial Ratios; Preferred Shares; Cash Distribution; Corporate Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Technology Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Republic of Ireland
- June 2013 (Revised September 2015)
- Case
Procter & Gamble
By: Jay W. Lorsch and Kathleen Durante
On July 12, 2012, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management announced publicly that it had purchased about $2 billion of Procter and Gamble (P&G) stock. Shares in the company closed up 3.75% the day the disclosure was made public. Ackman told the New York... View Details
- 2013
- Article
Boardroom Centrality and Firm Performance
By: David F. Larcker, Eric C. So and Charles C.Y. Wang
Firms with central or well-connected boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. Initiating a long position in the most central firms and a short position in the least central firms earns an average risk-adjusted return of 4.68% per year. Firms with... View Details
- March 2013
- Article
Misvaluing Innovation
By: Lauren Cohen, Karl Diether and Christopher Malloy
We demonstrate that a firm's ability to innovate is predictable, persistent, and relatively simple to compute, and yet the stock market ignores the implications of past successes when valuing future innovation. We show that two firms that invest the exact same in... View Details
- June 2012
- Article
Decoding Inside Information
By: Lauren Cohen, Christopher Malloy and Lukasz Pomorski
Using a simple empirical strategy, we decode the information in insider trading. Exploiting the fact that insiders trade for a variety of reasons, we show that there is predictable, identifiable "routine" insider trading that is not informative for the future of firms.... View Details
- Spring 2013
- Article
Does Mandatory IFRS Adoption Improve the Information Environment?
By: Joanne Horton, George Serafeim and Ioanna Serafeim
We examine the effect of mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on firms' information environment. We find that after mandatory IFRS adoption, consensus forecast errors decrease for firms that mandatorily adopt IFRS relative to forecast... View Details
- December 2012
- Case
Coca-Cola: Residual Income Valuation
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Beiting Cheng and Edward J. Riedl
The case illustrates the use of the residual income (also known as the abnormal earnings) valuation approach. Students are asked to provide a valuation of Coca-Cola Company using the residual income valuation methodology and understand how it maps into the discounted... View Details