This dissertation examines the effect of income smoothing on information uncertainty, stock returns, and cost of equity. Following existing literature, I construct two income smoothing measures - capturing income smoothing through both total accruals and discretionary accruals. I show that income smoothing tends to reduce firms' information uncertainty, as measured by stock return volatility, analyst forecast dispersion, and analyst forecast error. Further, I provide evidence that market prices income smoothing and rewards income smoothing firms with a premium. Controlling for unexpected earnings shocks and other firm characteristics, income smoothing firms have significantly higher abnormal returns around earnings announcement. Finally, I show that income smoothing, particularly through discretionary accruals, reduces firms' implied cost of equity.

Forecasting firms' earnings has long been an interest of market participants and academics. Traditional forecasting studies in a multivariate time series setting do not take into account that the timing of market data release for a specific time period of observation is often spread over several days or weeks. This thesis focuses on the separation of announcement timing or data release and the use of econometric real-time methods, which we refer to as an updated vector autoregression (VAR) forecast, to predict data that have yet to be released. In comparison to standard time series forecasting, we show that the updated forecasts will be more accurate the higher the correlation coefficients among the standard VAR innovations are. Forecasting with the sequential release of information has not been studied in the VAR framework, and our approach to U.S. nonfarm payroll employment and the six Canadian banks shows its value. By using the updated VAR forecast, we conclude that there are relative efficiency gains in the one-step-ahead forecast compared to the ordinary VAR forecast, and compared to professional consensus forecasts. Thought experiments emphasize that the release ordering is crucial in determining forecast accuracy. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-30 12:34:42.629

This study examines the stock market reaction to new convertible bond (CB) issuing firms in Japan during the period 2009 to 2013. The evidence suggests that issuing firms experience significantly negative abnormal following the announcement dates. The relationship between certain firm characteristics and magnitude of market reaction is also studied. Firm size, leverage and book-to-market ratios are found to have no association with abnormal return following a CB announcement.

In the context of developing effective PSAs to help increase the number of young adults who quit smoking or don’t start, this study took cultural orientation into account and assessed the persuasive effect of high and low source credibility. This present study showed that, in terms of attitude toward the ad message, people who were exposed to a commercial brand actually had a more positive attitude than those who saw the video that had CCTV as its producer. However, no significant differences were found in the other four constructs, including attitude toward antismoking, smoking-related social norms and subjective norms, smoking-related anticipated regret and intentions to quit or not start smoking.

This paper examines the effects of dividend announcements and dividend payments on OMX30 stock prices and tests if these effects indicate market efficiency. An event study methodology is used to find if the dividend events have a significant impact on stock prices. The study finds that both dividend announcements and dividend payments have a significant negative effect on prices. Disappointed investors or lowered expectations for future dividends may be the cause of the announcement effect. The results indicate that the stock market is semi-strong efficient for the announcements but inefficient when it comes to the payments.

Orientador: Igor Rossoni / Banca: Sílvia Maria Azevedo / Banca: Sérgio Vicente Mota / Resumo: Este trabalho investigativo aborda questões relevantes sobre a consciência discursível em A morte e a morte de Quincas Berro D'Água de Jorge Amado. Observa-se, portanto, o reconhecido valor artístico que o conjunto da obra evidencia, e que através de uma sustentação teórica e pela aplicabilidade prática da mesma pode ficar comprovado o teor retórico ali contido. / Abstract: This present invesgative work approaches relevant matters about the discourssive consciousness on A morte de Quincas Berro D'Água de Jorge Amado. Therefore it is noticed the recognized artistic value that the set of the work shows up and also that included in the work confirmed. / Mestre

Since 2000, the Chinese securities market has introduced private placement refinancing programs from foreign markets. Private placement has gradually emerged as an important refinancing method for domestic listed companies in China. However, any emerging financing means has some drawbacks. In the case of the newly introduced private placements, its manifestation in the Chinese market is the significant fluctuations of stock prices before and after the expiration dates of the lockup periods for stocks issued through private placement and announcements of private placement plans (disclosure plans, receiving approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, etc.) and even significant declines, resulting in most investors suffering unexpected losses. Scholars abroad have conducted several systematic and extensive studies on private placement. However, owing to the short history of private placement practice in China and its unique features, research on this subject is limited. With its gradual maturity, the private placement practice has gradually emerged as important means of financing consideration for listed companies in China. Therefore, in-depth research on the effects of private placements becomes essential.From 2013 to 2016, the domestic private placement market was wisely popular. By the end of 2016, the number of private placement projects, the amount of investment, and number of unlocked stocks had reached the peak. The release of large amounts of money significantly impacted the market. Investors observed the impact of the unlocked stocks on excess returns. Moreover, the company’s announcement before and after the lock-in period expiration has a psychological effect on investors, thus affecting their investment behaviors. Therefore, this empirical study focuses on the two types of impacts: excess returns and announcement effects. This study selected the data of unlocking through private placement of A shares in 2013–2016 as the sample and adopted statistical methods to analyze changes in excess return over the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 Index of 10 days before and after the lock-in period expiration date of private placements. It is found that the negative impact of unlocking on the stock price is mainly reflected before unlocking, especially in the 5 trading days before unlocking. The negative impact is not significant after unlocking. Then, by grouping comparison, it is shown that for stocks with different market capitalizations, company ownership structures, and percentages of unlocked stocks over total shares outstanding, there are significant differences in the cumulative excess returns before and after the lock-in period expiration dates. For further verification, this study applies multiple regressions on the influencing factors of the cumulative excess return of stocks before, during, and after unlocking, indicating that the level of market capitalization of the stock, company ownership structure, and the percentage of unlocked stock indeed exert a negative impact. Therefore, it is confirmed that investors can formulate the best trading strategy before and after unlocking, based on factors such as market capitalization, company ownership structure, and percentages of unlocked stock. Finally, a case study of Huangshan Tourism is carried out to further support the conclusion of the empirical analysis. / Business Administration/Finance

This dissertation examines the cost behavior model implicit in analysts' and investors' decisions. Even though a cost behavior model that recognizes fixed and variable costs and cost stickiness can provide more accurate earnings forecasts, analysts and investors cannot fully capture sticky cost information. Since analysts are not fully aware of the correct cost behavior model, earnings surprises can be largely explained by a cost model that recognizes sticky stickiness. Similarly, investors' under-reaction to sticky cost information relates to post-earnings announcement drifts. As a result, positive abnormal returns can be earned by a trading strategy that takes advantage of investors' lower awareness of sticky cost information. / Business Administration/Accounting

Using the sample of three largest stocks from seven main market sectors in the US, the thesis examines the effect of information content of earnings announce­ ments on market reaction across sectors. Our findings prove the asymmetry of market reaction to different earnings surprise categories with negative-surprise reaction being the most profound. The financial markets tend to be less ef­ ficient in response to negative earnings surprises. Leakage of information is not present suggesting that insider trading is well-mitigated on the US capital markets. Furthermore, we investigate the market reaction to earnings surprises in different sectors separately and find that Consumer Staples and IT sector tend to be the most sensitive, on the contrary Telecommunication and Energy sector tend to be the least sensitive. G14; G15; G30JEL Classification Keywords Earnings announcement; Market reaction; Mar­ ket efficiency; Cross-sector analysis; Corpo­ rate disclosure; Insider trading; Post-earnings- announcement drift A u th o r's e-m ail p a v e l.prucekSgm ail. com S u p erv iso r's e-m ail kocenda@f s v . c u n i. cz

När ett bolag redovisar ett resultat som inte är i linje med marknadens förväntningar tenderar bolaget att uppvisa en avvikelseavkastning en period efter att resultatet har publicerats. Denna studie undersöker om bolag som redovisar ett oförväntat resultat jämfört med analytikers förväntningar uppvisar en avvikelseavkastning under en period på 30 respektive 60 handelsdagar efter publiceringen av bolagets kvartalsrapport. Studien undersöker tidsperioden 2004-2010. Dessutom undersöker studien om avvikelseavkastningen perioden efter att resultatet publicerats tenderar att avvika under den finansiella marknadens nedgångsfas 2007- 2008 i jämförelse med 2004-2006 och 2009-2010. För att genomföra undersökningen används en eventstudie. Studiens resultat visar att under perioden 2004-2010 uppvisar endast den decil av bolag som redovisat störst negativt oförväntat resultat en statistiskt säkerställd underavkastning på -1,9 % 30 handelsdagar efter att kvartalsrapporten publicerats. Vidare visar resultatet, vid jämförelse mellan 2007-2008 och perioderna 2004-2006 samt 2009-2010, att differensen i den genomsnittliga kumulativa avvikelseavkastningen under handelsdag 2 till 60 efter att bolagets kvartalsrapport har publicerats skiljer sig för de bolag som uppvisar ett positivt oförväntat resultat.