We study the relation between short-term earnings guidance and earnings management. We find that firms issuing short-term earnings forecasts exhibit significantly lower absolute abnormal accruals, our proxy for earnings management, than do firms that do not issue earnings forecasts. Regular...

Prior research finds that sell-side analysts are generally willing partners with company management in facilitating the consistent meeting or beating of earnings expectations. We examine analysts who demonstrate the opposite behavior: issuing an unusually optimistic earnings forecast at the end...

We examine whether lenders use analyst forecasts of the borrowing firm's earnings when establishing covenant thresholds in private debt contracts. We find greater proximity between the analysts' consensus earnings forecast and the future earnings performance required by the contract among...

I/B/E/S is a common source of analyst earnings forecast data, and the reliability of these data is important for practice and academic research. Examining a common sample period, we compare annual earnings forecasts across two versions of the I/B/E/S detail file, one made available in 2009 and...