Changing economic conditions over the past two decades have created incentives for sell-side analysts to both provide their institutional clients tiered services and to streamline their written research process. One manifestation of these changes is an increased likelihood of analysts' issuing...

We re-examine the widely held belief that analysts' earnings per share (EPS) forecasts are superior to random walk (RW) time-series forecasts. We investigate whether analysts' annual EPS forecasts are superior, and if so, under what conditions. Simple RW EPS forecasts are more accurate than...

We investigate whether retiring CEOs engage in opportunistic terminal-year forecasting behavior and circumstances in which such behavior is likely to be more or less pronounced. Using a within-CEO empirical design, we find that retiring CEOs are more likely to issue forecasts of future earnings,...

We examine whether income tax disclosures under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are useful for predicting changes in future earnings and cash flows, and whether such disclosures are more or less useful than disclosures made under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles...

We employ a novel machine-learning technique (“clusterwise linear regression”) to identify five distinct forecasting styles employed by equity research analysts. We first document significant variation in how each of the forecasting styles contributes to the consensus analyst forecast...

We examine how brokerage firm IPOs influence the research quality of sell-side analysts employed by the brokerage. Our main results focus on earnings forecast bias and absolute forecast errors as proxies for research quality. Using a staggered difference-in-differences analysis, we document...