The informationally constrained analyst: The impact of inferential beliefs on analysts' decision processes.

This study focuses on financial analysts' decision-making processes when predicting future financial data when firm-specific information is absent. Three hypotheses concerning inference making were examined using financial analysts within a sales prediction task where the prior-period relationship between intra-industry firms and the consistency of forecasted information were manipulated. In addition, written protocols were gathered and analysts completed a survey which provided additional evidence on inference making.