Analyst information production and the timing of annual earnings forecasts Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York. We investigate whether the reputation-herding theory or the tradeoff theory explains variation in the timing of individual analysts forecasts. Using forecast accuracy improvements, forecast boldness, and the price impact of forecasts as measures of forecast quality, we find that in the information discovery phase that precedes an earnings announcement, earlier forecasts have higher quality than later forecasts. We also find a similar pattern in the information analysis phase that begins with the earnings announcement date. Our findings suggest that consistent with the herding theory, analysts who are more capable participate early in discovering and analyzing information, and therefore earlier forecasts in the information discovery and analysis phases are of higher quality than later forecasts in that phase.

published proceedings

  • Review of Accounting Studies

author list (cited authors)

  • Keskek, S., Tse, S., & Tucker, J. W.

citation count

  • 39

complete list of authors

  • Keskek, Sami||Tse, Senyo||Tucker, Jennifer Wu

publication date

  • December 2014