The paper discusses common mistakes made by financial profession when valuating cash flows by applying inconsistent weighted average discount rates to cash flows to equity, to unlevered firm, to levered firm or other complex cash flows not regarding their type (constant or growing perpetuities,...

The state of the art in the analyst forecasting literature is that analyst earnings forecast ability is only firm-specific (Chen, Francis, and Jiang (2005); Chen and Jiang (2006)). This view is based on Park and Stice's (2000) finding of the absence of a “spillover” effect, i.e., investors...

Existing research documents that firms employing relatively high levels of stock option-based compensation more frequently report quarterly earnings that meet or exceed analysts' forecasts. This paper examines the roles of income-increasing accounting choices and management guidance to analysts...

Recent work in management accounting offers several novel insights into firms' cost behavior. This study explores whether financial analysts appropriately incorporate information on two types of cost behavior in predicting earnings - cost variability and cost stickiness. Since analysts'...

We re-examine the widely held belief that analysts' earnings per share (EPS) forecasts are superior to random walk (RW) time-series forecasts. We investigate whether analysts' annual EPS forecasts are superior, and if so, under what conditions. Simple RW EPS forecasts are more accurate than...

This paper examines the performance consequences of cutting discretionary expenditures and managing accruals to exceed analyst forecasts. We show that firms that just beat analyst forecasts with low quality earnings exhibit a short-term stock price benefit relative to firms that miss forecasts...

We report the results of an experiment which shows that investors' earnings- and investment-related judgments are jointly influenced by their investment position (long versus short), the news valence of guidance issued by management, and the amount of ambiguity in the guidance. Prior research...

Financial analysts comprise one important group of information intermediaries between firms and investors (Healy & Palepu, 2001). They have great potential to decrease information asymmetry between firms and investors, resulting in better allocation of capital. Analysts' work is influenced by,...

We report the results of an experiment which shows that investors' earnings- and investment-related judgments are jointly influenced by their investment position (long versus short), the news valence of guidance issued by management, and the amount of ambiguity in the guidance. Prior research...

This study examines properties of analysts' cash flow forecasts and compares them to those exhibited by analysts' earnings forecasts. Our results indicate that analysts' cash flow forecasts are less accurate than analysts' earnings forecasts and improve at a slower rate during the forecast...