I interpret conservatism as resulting in earnings reflecting ‘bad news’ more quickly than ‘good news’. This interpretation implies systematic differences between bad news and good news periods in the timeliness and persistence of earnings. Using firms’ stock returns to measure news, the contemporaneous sensitivity of earnings to negative returns is two to six times that of earnings to positive returns. I also predict and find that negative earnings changes are less persistent than positive earnings changes. Earnings response coefficients (ERCs) are higher for positive earnings changes than for negative earnings changes, consistent with this asymmetric persistence. ¢ 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.