Users of I/B/E/S data generally act as if I/B/E/S reported actual earnings represent the earnings analysts were forecasting when they issued their earnings estimates. For example, when assessing analyst forecast accuracy, users of I/B/E/S data compare analysts' forecasts of EPS with I/B/E/S...

This paper provides evidence on the net stock price effects associated with managers following a disclosure strategy of guiding earnings down to a level where they can report a positive earnings surprise. Prior literature documents a stock price premium when firms meet or beat analysts'...

Prior research on equity analysts focuses almost exclusively on those employed by sell-side investment banks and brokerage houses. Yet investment firms undertake their own buy-side research and their analysts face different stock selection and recommendation incentives than their sell-side...

We investigate the implications of firms' benchmark-beating pattern with respect to analysts' quarterly cash flow forecasts for current capital market valuation and future firm performance. We contend that nonnegative earnings surprises are more likely to be supported by real operating...

We examine the relationship between analyst research and corporate earnings announcements to explore the relative importance of information discovery versus interpretation of previously released information. Using equity market reaction to capture information content, we find that information...

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...

This study examines the effects of financial reporting complexity on investors' trading behavior. I find that more complex (longer and less readable) filings are associated with lower overall trading, and that this relationship appears due to a reduction in small investors' trading activity....

This study investigates whether analysts who pay attention to investor sentiment issue more or less profitable stock recommendations than their peers. We find that analysts whose stock recommendations are positively correlated with recent or future investor sentiment tend to issue relatively...

This is the first large-scale study to examine the peer companies used by sell-side equity analysts in their research reports. Using a unique hand-collected data set, we investigate the relation between peer valuation and peer choice by analysts. Controlling for numerous factors, we find that...

Motivated by recent controversies on the information role of financial analysts, this study examines whether firm level transparency proxied by accounting quality affects the mix of market/industry-wide vs. firm-specific information provided by analysts. Specifically, we show that better...