Today Josef Fink completed his doctoral studies with a dissertation defense that the committee graded "Sehr gut", the top grade in the Austrian grading system. Josef's dissertation, titled "Experiments on the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift", was also graded "Sehr gut". In its core, it is made up of three papers studying the phenomenon of stock prices drifting in the direction of the surprise component of a company's announced earnings for up to four quarters following the initial announcement.
In his first paper, titled "A Review of the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift" and published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Josef provides the most comprehensive (by a wide margin) review of the literature on the PEAD phenomenon to date. In his second paper, titled "Earnings Autocorrelation and the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift", Josef studies the role of autocorrelation in the earnings process on the drift. In his third paper, titled "Trading Frictions and the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift", Josef investigates the role of frictions (i.e., a short-selling ban and transaction fees) on the drift.
We congratulate Josef and express our pride of him for this achievement!