Existing literature assumes that the order and timing of analysts' earnings forecasts are determined exogenously. However, analysts choose when to issue their forecasts. This study develops a model that endogenizes the timing decision of analysts and analyzes their equilibrium timing strategies. In the model, analysts face a trade-off between the timeliness and the precision of their forecasts. The model introduces a timing game with two analysts, derives and analyzes its unique pure strategies equilibrium, and provides new empirical predictions about the precision and timing of analysts' forecasts. The equilibrium has one of two patterns: either the times of the analysts' forecasts cluster, or there is a separation in the times of the forecasts. The less informed and less similar the analysts are, the more likely it is that they forecast at different points in time. All else equal, analysts with a higher precision of initial private information tend to forecast earlier, and analysts with a higher learning ability tend to forecast later.

We introduce real decisions (a project choice decision, an investment scale decision, and an information acquisition decision) to the Dye (1985) voluntary disclosure framework and examine how the prospect of voluntary disclosure affects managers' real decisions. Riskier projects lead to more volatile environment and hence entail higher efficiency loss at the subsequent investment scale decision stage if managers are uninformed. If managers are informed, they can withhold bad information, and the value of this option is higher for riskier projects. We show that the voluntary nature of managers' disclosure may lead to two types of inefficiencies: (1) managers may choose riskier projects, which generate lower expected cash flow due to the higher efficiency loss at the subsequent decision stage, and (2) managers may over-invest in information acquisition, because informed managers with bad information have the option to pool with uninformed managers and benefit from being overpriced.

We study a dynamic timing game between multiple firms, who decide when to go public in the presence of possible information externalities. A firm's IPO pricing is a function of its privately observed idiosyncratic type and the level of investor sentiment, which follows a stochastic, mean-reverting process. Firms may wish to delay their IPOs in order to observe the market reception of the offerings of their peers. We characterize the unique symmetric threshold equilibrium, whereby pioneer firms with high idiosyncratic types endogenously emerge. The results provide novel implications regarding variation in IPO timing, sequential clustering, IPO droughts, the composition of new issues over time, and how IPO volume fluctuates over time. These include, among others, that in more populated industries, a lower proportion of firms emerge as industry pioneers, but follower IPO volume is intensified. Additionally, heightened uncertainty over investor sentiment exacerbates delay and leads to lower IPO volume.

This study models the interaction between a sell-side analyst and risk-averse investors. It derives an analyst’s optimal earnings forecast and investors’ optimal trading decisions in a setting where the analyst’s payoff depends on the trading volume the forecast generates as well as on the forecast error. In the fully separating equilibrium, we find that the analyst biases the forecast upward (downward) if his private signal reveals relatively good (bad) news. The model predicts that: (1) the analyst biases the forecast upward more often than downward and the forecast is on average optimistic; (2) the magnitude of the analyst’s bias is increasing in the per-share benefit from trading volume he receives; and (3) the analyst’s expected squared forecast error may increase in the precision of his private information. Finally, we characterize the circumstances under which the (rational) analyst acts as if he overweights or underweights his private information.

Firms with correlated fundamentals often issue reports sequentially, leading to information spillovers. The theoretical literature has investigated multifirm reporting, but only when firms report simultaneously. We examine the implications of sequential reporting, where firms aim to maximize their market price and can manipulate their reports. The introduction of sequentiality significantly alters the biasing behavior of firms and the resulting informational environment relative to simultaneous reporting. In particular, a lead firm always manipulates more when reports are issued sequentially. Moreover, relative to simultaneous reporting, sequential reporting reduces the overall information available to the market about each firm, resulting in less efficient and less volatile prices. Additionally, we find that stronger correlation in firm fundamentals can amplify the lead firm’s incentive for manipulation under sequentiality, in contrast to simultaneous reporting. We offer further results regarding, for example, market response coefficients, and provide a number of empirical implications.

We study a model of earnings management and provide predictions about the time-series properties of earnings quality and reporting bias. We estimate the model to empirically separate two components of investor uncertainty: fundamental economic uncertainty, and information asymmetry between the manager and investors due to reporting noise. We find that (1) the null hypothesis of zero reporting bias is rejected; (2) the ratio of the variance of the noise introduced by the reporting process to the variance of earnings shocks is, on average, 45 percent; (3) the reporting noise plays a significantly less prominent role in valuation, due to the persistence of shocks to economic earnings; (4) the magnitude of investors' uncertainty created by reporting noise about firms' assets in place and about future earnings is similar; and (5) ignoring the possibility of reporting distortions would bias the estimates of variance and persistence of economic earnings.

We present a rational model of earnings management. An informed manager, whose compensation is linked to the stock price, trades off the benefit of boosting the stock price by inflating the reported earnings against the costs of such manipulation. The investors rationally interpret his actions and adjust the price accordingly. When the distribution of true earnings and the compensation scheme are smooth, the conventional equilibrium in this signaling framework is also smooth and fully revealing. In this paper, we show that in the same “smooth” environment there exist equilibria in which kinks and discontinuities emerge endogenously in the distribution of reported earnings. The manager optimally chooses a partially pooling strategy, introducing endogenous noise into his report. The resulting vagueness enables the manager to reduce the average manipulation costs. The equilibrium has perfect revelation of earnings in the right and left tails of the distribution, while for intermediate earnings realizations, we get one or more pools that manifest themselves as discontinuities in the distribution of reported earnings. We study the properties of these partially pooling equilibria and suggest applications to financial reporting.

We present a rational model of earnings management. An informed manager, whose compensation is linked to the stock price, trades off the benefit of boosting the stock price by inflating the reported earnings against the costs of such manipulation. The investors rationally interpret his actions and adjust the price accordingly. When the distribution of true earnings and the compensation scheme are smooth, the conventional equilibrium in this signaling framework is also and fully revealing. In this paper, we show that in the same smooth environment there exist equilibria in which kinks and discontinuities emerge endogenously in the distribution of reported earnings. The manager optimally chooses a partially pooling strategy, introducing endogenous noise into his report. The resulting vagueness enables the manager to reduce the average manipulation costs. The equilibrium has perfect revelation of earnings in the right and left tails of the distribution, while for intermediate earnings realizations we get one or more pools that manifest themselves as discontinuities in the distribution of reported earnings. We study the properties of these partially pooling equilibria and suggest applications to financial reporting.