Managers often release earnings forecasts in advance of actual earnings announcements. It would appear that managers should at best be indifferent to such release given that the actual earnings will be disclosed at a future date. However, if the manager’s objective is to maximize his firm’s market value and he has control of production decisions, he may be motivated to release an earnings forec...

Previous literature studying analysts’ earnings forecasts examines their properties without considering firms’ response to analysts’ forecasts. This study improves upon previous research by considering firms’ earnings management with respect to analysts’ forecasts. I hypothesize that analysts understand firms’ earnings management practices, and incorporate firms’ expected behavior into their fo...

Time series models based upon the reported accounting data of Abbott Laboratories Inc. are used to forecast its one-year-ahead raw returns over hold-out periods of 1, 4 and 10 years. The sample data is annual, from 1955 to 2003. A general-to-specific, testing down, modelling method is used. The models suggest market values are corrected for imbalances between expected and actual market values i...

Investors and other contributors to stock exchange need a variety of tools, measures, and information in order to make decisions. One of the most common tools and criteria of decision makers is price-to earnings per share ratio. As a result, investors are in pursuit of ways to have a better assessment and forecast of price and dividends and get the highest returns on their investment. Previous ...

Early studies examining the effect of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) report a possible chilling effect on the quantity and quality of corporate disclosures. Approved in August 2000 by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Reg FD mandates against selective disclosure of corporate information. At the time of its release, the financial community expressed concern that the regulation w...

This paper studied the relationship between the management characteristics and the earnings forecast disclosure willingness within Chinese listed companies. Management characteristics were being defined and summarized as four aspects: structure characteristics, incentive characteristics, background characteristics and external governance mechanism. The Logistic regression model was applied to c...

An important problem facing managers is how to enhance the credibility, or believability, of their earnings forecasts. In this paper, we experimentally test whether a characteristic of a management earnings forecast—namely, whether it is disaggregated—can affect its credibility. We also test whether disaggregation moderates the relation between managerial incentives and forecast credibility. Di...