We test the implications of anchoring bias associated with forecast earnings per share (FEPS) for forecast errors, earnings surprises, stock returns, and stock splits. We find that analysts make optimistic (pessimistic) forecasts when a firm's FEPS is lower (higher) than the industry median....

The literature examining analyst activity assumes that access to management is valued by analysts and their employers. We propose a readily observable measure of access: how often an analyst is invited to be among the first to ask questions in the Q&A session of an earnings conference call....

We study information production and diffusion resulting from dynamic interactions between different types of informed investors in financial markets. Using a theoretical framework that exploits the setting of the Q&A section of earnings conference calls, we predict that information production...

Consistent with the idea that some of the noise in analysts' earnings forecasts originates in their geographic locations, we find that when analysts' locations are geographically more dispersed, the consensus forecast is more accurate, suggesting a diversification effect. Importantly, analysts'...

We show that when the locations of analysts covering a firm are geographically more diverse, the individual forecasts of the analysts for that firm are less correlated. More geographical diversity of co-analyst locations leads to more accurate individual analyst forecasts. This suggests that...