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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Integrity Of Financial Analysts: Evidence From Asymmetric Responses To Earnings Surprises, Rui Lu, Wenxuan Hou, Henry Oppenheimer, Ting Zhang
The Integrity Of Financial Analysts: Evidence From Asymmetric Responses To Earnings Surprises, Rui Lu, Wenxuan Hou, Henry Oppenheimer, Ting Zhang
Ting Zhang
This paper investigates the integrity of financial analysts by examining their recommendation responses to large quarterly earnings surprises. Although there is no significant difference in recommendation changes between affiliated and unaffiliated analysts in response to positive earnings surprises, affiliated analysts are more reluctant than unaffiliated analysts to downgrade stock recommendations in response to negative earnings surprises. The evidence implies that conflicts of interest undermine the integrity of financial analysts. We further examine the effects of reputation concern and the Global Research Analyst Settlement as informal and formal mechanisms, on restoring analysts’ integrity. The results show that the positive bias in …
An Analysis Of Risk-Taking Behavior For Public Defined Benefit Pension Plans, Nancy Mohan, Ting Zhang
An Analysis Of Risk-Taking Behavior For Public Defined Benefit Pension Plans, Nancy Mohan, Ting Zhang
Ting Zhang
This paper presents the first comprehensive study on the determinants of public pension fund investment risk and reports several new important findings. Unlike private pension plans, public funds undertake more risk if they are underfunded and have lower investment returns in the previous years, consistent with the risk transfer hypothesis. Furthermore, pension funds in states facing fiscal constraints allocate more assets to equity and have higher betas. There also appears to be a herding effect in that CalPERS equity allocation or beta is mimicked by other pension funds. Finally, our results suggest that government accounting standards strongly affect pension fund …