This study investigates differences in expert valuations of private versus public firms conducted for transactions outside the exchange. First, we provide evidence for extreme reliance of the experts on private firms' reported earnings, despite a possible manipulation of these earnings. In...

Listed firms in Japan are effectively compelled to report management forecasts of sales, ordinary income, and net income along with actual earnings and sales each year. Prior studies report that Japanese managers tend to announce optimistic forecasts of earnings. We show that a large part...