The Frequency of Financial Analysts' Forecast Revisions: Theory and Evidence about Determinants of Demand for Predisclosure Information

A fundamental property of a financial market is its degree of price informativeness. A major determinant of price informativeness is predisclosure information collected by financial analysts and then privately disseminated to clients, who make the recommended trades. We develop a dynamic model of the analyst's optimal strategy of forecast revision "frequency" with endogenous analysts and endogenous traders. We then empirically test the model's predictions. We find that forecast revision frequency is positively associated with earnings variability, trading volume, and earnings response coefficients, and negatively associated with skewness of trading volume. Thus, we find strong empirical support for our dynamic model. Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.