This article proposes a novel perspective on the term structure of market equity yields. Instead of using market dividend futures, we aggregate equity yields of individual firms to estimate the market equity yield curve. This approach allows studying the aggregation effect that shapes the market equity yield curve. During the period from 1990 to 2019, we find a positive aggregation effect: companies with high equity yields were expected to grow at higher rates than companies with low equity yields. Thus, high-yield companies were expected to generate an increasing share of total market dividends when expanding the investment time horizon. Under the assumption of flat firm-risk premia, this implies an upward-sloping term structure of equity risk premia. Together with the concave bond yield curve, the market equity yield curve was upward-sloping.

In light of changes in the media landscape from traditional print towards social media, in this study we compare the ability of investor sentiment measures obtained from various media sources to predict short-term market returns. We show that investor sentiment extracted from the social media platform Seeking Alpha is better in predicting market returns than investor sentiment obtained from the Wall Street Journal , a traditional print medium. Seeking Alpha is more suitable for the extraction of investor sentiment due to the richer language and timeliness of online media. • Research in behavioural finance has shown the importance of irrational investor sentiment to explain transitory stock market returns. • This study compares the ability of investor sentiment measures obtained from various media sources to predict short-term market returns. • Using a large data set of daily articles and reader comments from 2006 to 2020, this study shows that investor sentiment extracted from the social media platform Seeking Alpha is better in predicting market returns than investor sentiment obtained from the Wall Street Journal, a traditional print medium. • Seeking Alpha is more suitable to extract investor sentiment because of the richer language and timeliness of online media. • In contrast, differences in the volume and length of articles published on Seeking Alpha, and the greater variety of contributors, cannot explain the relative advantage of social media.

Academics and practitioners have long recognized the importance of a firm's industry membership in explaining its financial performance. Yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, recent research shows that industry‐specific profitability forecasting models are not better than economy‐wide models. The objective of this paper is to further explore this result and to provide insights into when and why industry‐specific profitability forecasting models are useful. We show that industry‐specific forecasts are significantly more accurate in predicting profitability for single‐segment firms and, to some extent, for business segments. For multiple‐segment firms, the aggregation of segment‐level data for external reporting of firm‐level financials obliterates the industry effects of their segments.

Concerns about the sustainability of contemporary capitalism have inspired a search for organizational forms that are more concerned with solving environmental and social problems. We examine whether one such model – foundation ownership – where a non-profit foundation owns and controls business companies, is associated with better sustainability outcomes. We hypothesize that foundations prioritize environmental and social objectives over profit maximization, resulting in stronger ESG performance in the companies they own. Using data on listed foundation-owned companies over the period 2003–2020 matched with control groups by firm size and industry, we find that foundation-owned firms have higher environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, particularly in the environmental and social dimensions. They maintained ESG activities during the financial crisis and committed to more significant emission reductions in the post-Paris Agreement period. Collectively, our findings highlight the potential of purposeful ownership in promoting corporate sustainability.