Macroeconomic Announcements and the Repricing of Earnings Risk
Prof. Leyla Jianyu Han
Assistant Professor of Finance
Questrom School of Business
Boston University
Macroeconomic announcements trigger the repricing of previous firm-specific earnings news, generating cross-sectional heterogeneity in risk compensation. At earnings announcements, investors form joint beliefs about firm-specific fundamentals and aggregate conditions. Subsequent macroeconomic announcements reveal the aggregate state, leading investors to reassess the firm-specific component of prior earnings news. We quantify this repricing channel in a dynamic equilibrium model with learning across earnings and macroeconomic announcements. Empirical evidence supports the model’s predictions: on macroeconomic announcement days, firms with recent earnings news earn lower risk premia than those without, and this effect is stronger when their earnings are more informative about aggregate conditions.
