Past research has shown that the level of operating accruals is a negative cross-sectional predictor of stock returns. This paper examines whether the accrual anomaly extends to the aggregate stock market. In contrast with cross-sectional findings, there is no indication that aggregate operating...

We propose that owing to limited investor attention and skepticism of complexity, firms with greater innovative originality (IO) will be undervalued, especially for firms with higher valuation uncertainty, lower attention, and greater sensitivity of future profitability to IO. We find that IO...

In Chinese culture, certain digits are lucky and others unlucky. We test how such numerological superstition affects financial decision in the China IPO market. We find that the frequency of lucky numerical stock listing codes exceeds what would be expected by chance. Also consistent with...

Behavioral theories suggest that investor misperceptions and market mispricing will be correlated across firms. We use equity and debt financing to identify common misvaluation across firms. A zero-investment portfolio (UMO, Undervalued Minus Overvalued) built from repurchase and new issue firms...

Psychological evidence indicates that it is hard to process multiple stimuli and perform multiple tasks at the same time. This paper tests the INVESTOR DISTRACTION HYPOTHESIS, which holds that the arrival of extraneous news causes trading and market prices to react sluggishly to relevant news...

Evidence indicates that people fear change and the unknown. We offer a model of familiarity bias in which individuals focus on adverse scenarios in evaluating defections from the status quo. The model explains the endowment effect, portfolio underdiversification, home and local biases....

Behavioral theories suggest that investor misperceptions and market mispricing will be correlated across firms. This paper uses equity financing to identify comovement in returns and commonality in misvaluation. A zero-investment portfolio (UMO, Undervalued Minus Overvalued) built from...

We document considerable return comovement associated with accruals after controlling for other common factors. An accrual-based factor-mimicking portfolio has a Sharpe ratio of 0.16, higher than that of the market factor or the SMB and HML factors of Fama and French (1993). In time series...

This paper offers an explanation for the forward discount puzzle in foreign exchange markets based upon investor overconfidence. In our model, overconfident individuals overreact to their information about future inflation differential. The spot and the forward exchange rates differentially...

The basic paradigm of asset pricing is in vibrant flux. The purely rational approach is being subsumed by a broader approach based upon the psychology of investors. In this approach, security expected returns are determined by both risk and misvaluation. This survey sketches a framework for...