I use controlled experiments to investigate the joint effects of forecast precision and forecast uncertainty on investor judgments. I find that forecast precision moderates the effects of forecast uncertainty on investors’ forecast reliability judgments such that the effects of forecast...

Reducing the amount of private information in corporate disclosures does not necessarily reduce the accuracy of analysts’ forecasts. This paper applies model-based earnings forecasts as a benchmark that is immune from disclosure of private information and evaluates the relative performance of...

Research optimism among securities analysts has been attributed to incentives provided by underwriting activities. We examine how analysts' forecast optimism varies with the business activities used to fund research. We find that analysts at firms with underwriting and trading businesses are...

We examine whether forecasters of earnings can be “nudged” into changing their forecasting behavior without altering their economic incentives or limiting their choices. We use a natural experiment on Estimize.com to quantify the effects of a nudge promoting a social norm of exerting one’s...

I study earnings management in an agency setting where the agent is overconfident in his ability to manage earnings and the principal can make the agent communicate earnings truthfully. Without communication, overconfidence can increase earnings management, increase incentive pay, and decrease...

Prior research finds that sell-side analysts are generally willing partners with company management in facilitating the consistent meeting or beating of earnings expectations. We examine analysts who demonstrate the opposite behavior: issuing an unusually optimistic earnings forecast at the end...

A growing body of literature in accounting and finance relies on implied cost of equity (COE) measures. Such measures are sensitive to assumptions about terminal earnings growth rates. In this paper we develop a new COE measure that is more accurate than existing measures because it incorporates...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine analysts' earnings forecasts during a period of heightened uncertainty and forecasting complexity, that of a forced change of CEO. How well do analysts utilise their information advantage to reduce information uncertainty between management and...

The size of the equity risk premium remains an unanswered question in the accounting and finance literature. This study proposes a new approach to reverse-engineer the equity risk premium, distinct from prior research, in that it does not rely on analysts' forecasts to proxy for the market's...

Recent literature suggests that other information included with management earnings forecasts may not be useful to the market as a direct disclosure. I use regression analysis to investigate whether this type of disclosure can help analysts to formulate more accurate forecasts of earnings....