We investigate whether short sellers and analysts differ in their use of information that is predictive of future returns. We find that short interest is significantly associated in the expected direction with all 11 variables examined. In contrast, analysts tend to positively recommend stocks with high growth, high accruals, and low book-to-market ratios, despite these variables having a negative association with future returns. We then investigate the profitability of using short interest in trading. We find abnormal returns (1.11 percent per month) from a zero-investment strategy that (1) shorts firms with highly favorable analyst recommendations (buy signal) but high short interest (sell signal), and (2) buys firms with highly unfavorable analyst recommendations (sell signal) but low short interest (buy signal). Short interest, therefore, appears to capture predictive information that can be used by investors in trading against analysts’ recommendations to increase returns.

We employ a novel machine learning technique to classify analysts’ forecast revisions into five types based on how the revision weighs publicly available signals. We label these forecast types as quant, sundry, contrarian, herder, and independent forecasts. Our tests reveal that a greater diversity of forecast types within the consensus is associated with increased consensus dispersion and improved consensus accuracy. Additionally, consensus diversity is associated with an improved information environment for firms, as reflected in reduced earnings announcement information asymmetry and volatility, higher earnings response coefficients, and faster price formation. Our study sheds light on how analysts revise their forecasts and documents capital market benefits associated with different analyst forecasting approaches.

This study investigates the role of the business press in the pricing of accounting information. Using a comprehensive dataset of more than 111,000 earnings-related business press articles published from 2000 to 2010, we find that press coverage of the annual earnings announcement mitigates cash flow mispricing, but has a negligible effect on accrual mispricing. We provide evidence that this impact is driven primarily by the press disseminating the information more broadly, rather than by the creation of new content that helps investors understand the implications of accounting information. Our results suggest that the business press plays an important role in facilitating the market's ability to efficiently impound accounting information into stock prices and provide new insights into the role of the business press as an information intermediary in capital markets.

We examine whether three tax system characteristics—required book-tax conformity, worldwide versus territorial approach, and perceived strength of enforcement—impact corporate tax avoidance across countries after controlling for firm-specific factors previously shown to be associated with tax avoidance (i.e., performance, size, operating costs, leverage, growth, the presence of multinational operations, and industry) and for other cross-country factors (i.e., statutory corporate tax rates, earnings volatility, and institutional factors). We find that, on average, firms avoid taxes less when required book-tax conformity is higher, a worldwide approach is used, and tax enforcement is perceived to be stronger. However, the relations between tax avoidance and all three tax systems characteristics are contextual and depend on the extent to which management compensation comes from variable pay, including bonuses, stock awards, and stock options. Data Availability: Data are available from sources identified in the text.

In this study, we examine whether investors' actions to acquire accounting information are predictive of future firm performance because these actions partially reveal investors' private expectations of this performance. Using a database of EDGAR downloads, we find some evidence that information acquisition of accounting reports by EDGAR users is, on average, predictive of future firm performance. We then determine the identity of the EDGAR user and examine whether different users' private expectations will be relatively more predictive of subsequent performance. We find that the information acquisition activities of more sophisticated institutional users (e.g., hedge funds, investment banks) are more strongly associated with future performance than are those of less sophisticated retail users. Finally, we find that information acquisition by sophisticated institutions is a leading indicator of their equity holdings. In summary, this study provides evidence of predictive information embedded in sophisticated investors' actions to acquire accounting information.