Pope and Walker examine differences in the timeliness and conservatism of U.S. and U.K. reported earnings. They conclude that the U.S. accounting regime appears significantly more conservative than the U.K. regime, when comparing earnings before extraordinary items. However, when comparing...

We argue that accounting conservatism makes earnings forecasting difficult by introducing transitory components in reported earnings. These transitory components are likely to be disproportionately represented in firms reporting losses. We show that analysts' mean forecast errors and absolute...