The Effect of Earnings Quality on Analyst Forecast Accuracy, Dispersion, and Optimism and Implications for CEO Compensation PDF Download

Author: David F. Salerno
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chief executive officers
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Extant research indicates that earnings attributes are important considerations to corporate decision makers and users of accounting information (e.g., Francis et al., 2004). One such attribute is earnings quality; often measured as the magnitude of accruals that do not convert to cash in a timely manner, where a poor match of cash flows and accruals indicates low earnings quality (e.g., Dechow and Dichev, 2002). Such accruals could be used to manage earnings, a practice that aims to achieve a pre-determined level of earnings by using accounting techniques rather than actual firm performance. This study consists of two essays and examines the effect of earnings quality on two groups of financial statement users; specifically financial analysts and CEO compensation setters. The first essay investigates the impact of earnings quality on earnings forecast accuracy, forecast dispersion, and forecast optimism of individual financial analysts. The primary model employed for analyst forecast accuracy is consistent with Barniv et al. (2005), Clement (1999), and Jacob et al. (1999). Further reduced model of forecast accuracy based on variables used by Bae et al. (2008) is also used. The forecast dispersion model is based on that of Behn (2008), and forecast optimism is measured following Cowen et al. (2006). The findings show that when earnings quality is higher, analyst forecasts exhibit greater accuracy and lower optimism. Higher earnings quality has some impact on forecast dispersion; however the affect largely disappears when correcting for correlation within firm clusters. The second essay examines whether earnings quality plays a role in CEO compensation when corporate earnings satisfy (or fail to satisfy) the market's expectations. Specifically, Essay II examines CEO bonus as the measure of compensation used to reward the CEO for performance. Because such rewards are often accomplished with cash compensation, and because salary is usually set before the start of the year, the bonus portion of the CEO's total pay package is likely to be affected by earnings quality (Matsunaga and Park (2001). The results provide evidence that lower earnings quality is associated with higher CEO bonus compensation for firms that have satisfied market earnings expectations.

Author: Kiridaran (Giri) Kanagaretnam
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
We investigate the relation between the proportion of total compensation received by CEOs from stock options and the accuracy and bias of analysts' earnings forecasts. We hypothesize that forecast accuracy decreases as the proportion of stock option pay increases. Higher proportions of stock options induce managers to undertake riskier projects, to change and/or reallocate their effort, to manipulate accounting earnings, and to make opportunistic voluntary disclosures, resulting in an increase in the complexity of forecasting. We also examine the relation between forecast bias and the proportion of stock option pay. Analysts' optimistic forecast bias increases as the proportion of stock option pay increases. Because forecast complexity increases with stock option pay, analysts, needing greater access to management's information to produce accurate forecasts, have incentives to increase the optimistic bias in their forecasts. Our empirical evidence indicates that analysts' earnings forecast accuracy decreases and forecast optimism increases as the proportion of CEO compensation from stock options increases, even after controlling for previously identified determinants of forecasting difficulty.

Author: Sundaresh Ramnath
Publisher: Now Publishers Inc
ISBN: 1601981627
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Financial Analysts' Forecasts and Stock Recommendations reviews research related to the role of financial analysts in the allocation of resources in capital markets. The authors provide an organized look at the literature, with particular attention to important questions that remain open for further research. They focus research related to analysts' decision processes and the usefulness of their forecasts and stock recommendations. Some of the major surveys were published in the early 1990's and since then no less than 250 papers related to financial analysts have appeared in the nine major research journals that we used to launch our review of the literature. The research has evolved from descriptions of the statistical properties of analysts' forecasts to investigations of the incentives and decision processes that give rise to those properties. However, in spite of this broader focus, much of analysts' decision processes and the market's mechanism of drawing a useful consensus from the combination of individual analysts' decisions remain hidden in a black box. What do we know about the relevant valuation metrics and the mechanism by which analysts and investors translate forecasts into present equity values? What do we know about the heuristics relied upon by analysts and the market and the appropriateness of their use? Financial Analysts' Forecasts and Stock Recommendations examines these and other questions and concludes by highlighting area for future research.

Author: Wenjuan Xie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description

Author: Bo Sun
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1437930980
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
Analyzes executive compensation in a setting where managers may take a costly action to manipulate corporate performance, and whether managers do so is stochastic. Examines how the opportunity to manipulate affects the optimal pay contract, and establishes necessary and sufficient conditions under which earnings management occurs. The author¿s model provides a set of implications on the role earnings management plays in driving the time-series and cross-sectional variation of executive compensation. In addition, the model's predictions regarding the changes of earnings management and executive pay in response to corporate governance legislation are consistent with empirical observations. Charts and tables.

Author: Carol Liu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
This study investigates whether effective audit committees influence the association between management earnings forecasts and the properties of analysts" forecasts. We posit that this influence on the part of an audit committee would likely result from increased responsibility for monitoring voluntary disclosure. Using the four attributes that the Blue Ribbon Committee (1999) and prior research suggest as being indicative of audit committee effectiveness, we find that analysts" forecasts exhibit higher accuracy and lower dispersion with the issuance of management forecasts for those firms employing audit committees that are composed exclusively of independent directors, include an accounting expert, and act with due diligence. We also find that effective audit committees strengthen the association between management and analyst forecast accuracy. Our evidence, therefore, supports the notion that effective corporate governance influences the reliability of voluntary disclosure, and thereby benefits the users of financial information.

Author: Robin Nicole Romanus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Despite countless efforts to elucidate market participants' understanding of the implications of earnings quality, empirical accounting research has rendered two distinct perspectives. The first perspective considers market participants naïve users of accounting information who fail to grasp the implications of earnings quality resulting in temporary security mispricing. The second perspective suggests that market participants scrutinize earnings reports carefully and subsequently discern and price the quality of earnings. The purpose of my research is to help clarify the ambiguity surrounding market participants' pricing of earnings quality using one clearly observable indicator of low-quality earnings, accounting restatements. This study examines the effect pre-restatement earnings quality has on short-window returns and analyst forecast revisions and dispersion following restatement announcements using a cross-section of 719 publicly traded firms that announced restatements between 1997 and 2004. Accrual and book-tax difference metrics are used to proxy for earnings quality. The metrics are examined separately and collectively to ascertain their individual and incremental effects in modeling the market reaction. Further analyses investigate the effects that various levels of investor sophistication have on the market reaction. Results indicate that the market reaction to restatement announcements is significantly influenced by pre-restatement earnings quality. Specifically, both the accrual and book-tax difference measures of earnings quality are significantly and negatively related to the market reaction. Further analysis indicates the predictive power of the model is improved by including both the accrual and book-tax difference proxies. This finding suggests the information in book-tax differences may provide market participants with signals from which to assess earnings quality that are distinct from those contained in accruals. Basic results for analyst forecast dispersion and revisions are not conclusive. Results of the interactions between each earnings quality proxy and level of investor sophistication are significant only for the accrual based measure of earnings quality. This suggests that sophisticated investors are more attuned to the implication of accrual based measures of earnings quality than book-tax difference measures.

Author: Beverly R. Walther
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
We examine the association between investor expectations and its components and sell-side analysts' short-run quarterly earnings forecast bias and forecast accuracy. To measure investor expectations, we use the Index of Consumer Expectations (ICE) survey and decompose it into the “fundamental” component related to underlying economic factors (FUND) and the “sentiment” component unrelated to underlying economic factors (SENT). We find that analysts are the most optimistic and the least accurate when SENT is higher. Management long-horizon earnings forecasts attenuate the effects of SENT on forecast optimism and forecast accuracy. Analysts are also the most accurate when FUND is higher. Last, the market places more weight on unexpected earnings when SENT is high. These findings suggest that analysts are affected by investor sentiment and the market reacts more strongly to unexpected earnings when analyst forecasts are the least accurate. The last result potentially explains why prior research (for example, Baker and Wurgler 2006) finds an association between investor sentiment and cross-sectional stock returns.

Author: Bin Ke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 63

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Book Description
This study offers evidence on the earnings forecast bias analysts use to please firm management and the associated benefits they obtain from issuing such biased forecasts in the years prior to Regulation Fair Disclosure. Analysts who issue initial optimistic earnings forecasts followed by pessimistic earnings forecasts before the earnings announcement produce more accurate earnings forecasts and are less likely to be fired by their employers. The effect of such biased earnings forecasts on forecast accuracy and firing is stronger for analysts who follow firms with heavy insider selling and hard-to-predict earnings. The above results hold regardless of whether a brokerage firm has investment banking business or not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that analysts use biased earnings forecasts to curry favor with firm management in order to obtain better access to management's private information.

Author: Paul L. Joskow
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chief executive officers
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
This study explores the dynamic structure of the pay-for- performance relationship in CEO compensation and quantifies the effect of introducing a more complex model of firm financial performance on the estimated performance sensitivity of executive pay. The results suggest that current compensation responds to past performance outcomes, but that the effect decays considerably within two years. This contrasts sharply with models of infinitely persistent performance effects implicitly assumed in much of the empirical compensation literature. We find that both accounting and market performance measures influence compensation and that the salary and bonus component of pay as well as total compensation have become more sensitive to firm financial performance over the past two decades. There is no evidence that boards fail to penalize CEOs for poor financial performance or reward them disproportionately well for good performance. Finally, the data suggest that boards may discount extreme performance outcomes -both high and low - relative to performance that lies within some `normal' band in setting compensation.