Earnings forecasts are ubiquitous in today’s financial markets. They are essential indicators of future firm performance and a starting point for firm valuation. Extremely inaccurate and overoptimistic forecasts during the most recent financial crisis have raised serious doubts regarding the...

An examination of analysts' accuracy in predicting annual earnings for firms reporting losses and firms reporting profits finds that analysts are ten times more accurate in predicting the earnings of profit firms. They have also improved their predictive ability for profit firms since the...

Prior research on financial analyst' quarterly earnings forecasts has documented serial correlation in forecast errors. This paper examines the way serial correlation in quarterly earnings forecast errors varies with firm and analyst attributes such as the firm's industry and the analyst's...