John Knopf, Michael Rebello, Dan Rogers, Steve Smith, and John Thorton. We have further benefited from the comments of the anonymous reviewers. We also gratefully acknowledge the contribution of I/B/E/S Inc. in providing earnings per share forecast data as part of a broad program to encourage research on earnings expectations. *Correspondence author, Department of Finance, J. Mack Robinson Coll...

Recent research suggests that optimistically biased earnings forecasts issued by analysts are attributable to analysts minimizing symmetric, linear loss functions. We test an alternative explanation, namely that analysts have asymmetric loss functions. Theory predicts that if loss functions are asymmetric then forecast error bias depends on forecast error variance, but not necessarily on skewne...

In this study, I investigate whether market learning explains the absence of the accrual anomaly in recent years by examining three conditions associated with the presence of the anomaly in prior research: (i) a differential relation between future earnings and cash flows versus accruals, (ii) incorrect weighting of cash flows and accruals by investors when predicting earnings, and (iii) associ...

earnings management has inverted the main objective of financial reporting through the distortion of the actual economic performance of companies and prevented the complete transfer of information to market. given the importance of subject of research, incentives that cause earnings management have been reviewed from various aspects. the main purpose of this research is to examine the relations...

We investigate the presence and impact of forecast errors in the arrival rate of customers to a service system. Analysis of a large dataset shows that forecast errors can be large relative to the fluctuations naturally expected in a Poisson process. We show that ignoring forecast errors typically leads to overestimates of performance and that forecast errors of the magnitude seen in our dataset...