Pinello Wins 2005 ABO Outstanding Dissertation Award

The AAA Accounting, Behavior and Organizations (ABO) Section is pleased to announce that Arianna Spina Pinello (Georgia State University) is the recipient of the Section's 2005 Outstanding Dissertation Award. Lisa Sedor (University of Notre Dame), Chair of the selection committee (which also included Kim Sawers (University of California-Riverside), Brooke Elliott (University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana) and Lisa Gaynor (Georgetown University)), presented Professor Pinello with the Award at the 2005 ABO Research Conference in Atlanta in October.

Anecdotal evidence has suggested that corporations guide analyst forecasts with the intent of managing earnings' surprises and producing favorable market responses (e.g., artificially lowering analyst forecasts in order to earn a market premium by beating the lowered expectation). Based upon her belief that "the presence of uncertainty affects investor reaction to the expectations path in predictable ways," Pinello examined "how investors form their own earnings expectation in response to analyst forecasts and forecast revisions." Her findings indicate that "investors are more pessimistic than analysts in their earnings expectations" and that "the divergence between investors' and analysts' expectations plays an important role in their reaction." She notes that the market premium based upon the "earnings surprise" appears to result directly from the difference between the investors' own expectations and the analysts' consensus forecast: "Because investors tend to be more pessimistic than the analysts, they perceive a positive (negative) earnings surprise to be larger (smaller) than reported which explains why investors appear to reward positive earnings surprises more than they penalize negative earnings surprises."

The purpose of the award is to recognize outstanding dissertation research in a behavioral/organizations topic. According to the Committee, Pinello's dissertation "was well-motivated by and linked to an unexplained phenomenon examined in archival research; very ambitious and well executed; and extremely well-written." Pinello completed her dissertation at Florida State University. Her dissertation was chaired by Rick Morton. Her other dissertation committee members included Neal Charness, Richard Dusenbury, and Martin "Bud" Fennema.

In addition to a plaque for the award recipient (and a second for the dissertation chair), the AAA/ABO Section Dissertation Award carries with it a $1,000 cash award.