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Description
While credit rating agencies use both forward-looking and historical information in evaluating a firm's credit risk, the role of forward-looking information in their rating decisions is not well understood. In this study, I examine the association between management earnings guidance news and future credit rating changes. While upward earnings guidance is not informative for credit rating changes, downward earnings guidance is significantly and positively associated with both the likelihood and speed of rating downgrades. In cross-sectional analyses, I find that downward guidance is especially informative in two important circumstances: (i) when a firm's current credit rating is overly optimistic compared to a model predicted rating, and (ii) when the relevance or reliability of alternative information sources is lower. In addition, I find that downward guidance is associated with lower future cash flows, as well as a higher volatility of future cash flows. Overall, the results are consistent with credit rating agencies incorporating voluntary bad news disclosures into their decisions about whether and when to downgrade a firm.
ContributorsLin, An-Ping (Author) / Hillegeist, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Hugon, Jean (Thesis advisor) / Call, Andrew (Committee member) / Dhaliwal, Dan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
I examine the degree to which stockholders' aggregate gain/loss frame of reference in the equity of a given firm affects their response to the firm's quarterly earnings announcements. Contrary to predictions from rational expectations models of trade (Shackelford and Verrecchia 2002), I find that abnormal trading volume around earnings announcements is larger (smaller) when stockholders are in an aggregate unrealized capital gain (loss) position. This relation is stronger among seller-initiated trades and weaker in December, consistent with the cognitive bias referred to as the disposition effect (Shefrin and Statman 1985). Sensitivity analysis reveals that the relation is stronger among less sophisticated investors and for firms with weaker information environments, consistent with the behavioral explanation. I also present evidence on the consequences of this disposition effect. First, stockholders' aggregate unrealized capital gain position moderates the degree to which information-related determinants of trade (e.g. unexpected earnings, firm size, and forecast dispersion) affect abnormal announcement-window trading volume. Second, stockholders' aggregate unrealized capital gains position is associated with announcement-window abnormal returns, consistent with the disposition effect reducing the market's ability to efficiently incorporate earnings news into price.
ContributorsWeisbrod, Eric (Author) / Hillegeist, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Kaplan, Steven (Committee member) / Mikhail, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This study explores whether finance students at Arizona State University learn important technical business concepts at a textbook level and, if they do, do they recognize when to use them in real-world scenarios. These questions are important because the ability to learn and adapt knowledge to different situations is a desirable skill for a business professional. I chose NPV as the concept to test because it is arguably the central concept to learn in business school. Additionally, NPV is specifically taught in at least two courses by the time students graduate and it is frequently applied in business. The main hypothesis the study intends to explore is: students that have taken finance 300 will be able to identify the NPV problem. Survey results indicated that only 47% of students could identify the NPV problem. Further results indicated that only 27% of the original 100% (8 out of 30) participants could further apply NPV knowledge. Additional analyses based on grade earned and personal confidence level showed that having higher of either of the attributes generally showed the ability to identify NPV. Based on the results, I propose teaching more application-based learning to enhance career-readiness. Further research, expanding on these results, could be made to formulate a function to predict a student’s ability to identify NPV before being surveyed. This function could then be used to predict the outcome of the next student tested and allow for change to be made in teaching techniques.
ContributorsGomez, Andrew (Author) / Orpurt, Steven (Thesis director) / Hillegeist, Stephen (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05