The website as a domain-specific genre

The paper takes an initial look at how the medial conditions of the screen and the Internet define new constraints for language and style of company websites. The paper first discusses how the impact of bad grammar is enhanced by the salience and universal visibility on the screen. The main part of the paper argues that the language of company websites often represents fossilized rhetorical structures as a paper text hangover from the medial conditions of reading written texts and views this residue as an evolutionary stage of the evolution towards a medially appropriate style.

Target Price Accuracy

This study analyzes the accuracy of forecasted target prices within analysts’ reports. We compute a measure for target price forecast accuracy that evaluates the ability of analysts to exactly forecast the ex-ante (unknown) 12-month stock price. Furthermore, we determine factors that explain this accuracy. Target price accuracy is negatively related to analyst-specific optimism and stock-specific risk (measured by volatility and price-to-book ratio). However, target price accuracy is positively related to the level of detail of each report, company size and the reputation of the investment bank. The potential conflicts of interests between an analyst and a covered company do not bias forecast accuracy.