Anomalous Price Behavior Following Earnings Surprises: Does Representativeness Cause Overreaction?
Abstract
Behavioral Finance aims to explain empirical anomalies by introducing investor psychology as a determinant of asset pricing. This study provides strong evidence that anomalous stock price behavior following earnings announcements is due to a representativeness bias. It investigates current and past earnings surprises and subsequent market reaction for listed US companies over the period 1983-1999. The results suggest that investors overreact to past earnings surprises. As, on average, extreme past surprises are not confirmed by actual earnings figures, they are followed by stock market reactions of the opposite sign. Moreover, the longer the similar earnings surprise series, the higher the subsequent reversal.Download Info
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Finance with number 0505018.Length: 17 pages
Date of creation: 22 May 2005
Date of revision: 03 Oct 2005
Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpfi:0505018
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 17
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Web page: http://128.118.178.162
Related research
Keywords: Behavioral finance; overreaction; representativeness bias; earnings announcements;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies
- D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2005-05-29 (All new papers)
- NEP-RMG-2005-05-29 (Risk Management)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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