The incremental predictive ability of individual financial analysts

Financial analysts are among the most influential group of users of financial accounting information. Because the FASB has advocated usefulness as the "overriding criterion" (FASB, 1980, p.26) to judge accounting choices, accountants have a stake in understanding this important group of financial statement users. The majority of existing accounting research concerning financial analysts focuses on aggregated analysts' earnings forecasts rather than individual analysts' forecasts. Studies in accounting have documented the superiority of aggregated analysts' earnings forecasts relative to models. This is in contrast to the robust result from years of judgment/decision making (JDM) research that human predictions are inferior to statistical model predictions. Prior accounting studies have also documented that analysts exhibit optimism when forecasting earnings.