We carefully construct measures of earnings forecast accuracy and recommendation profitability that enable us to examine the association between the qualities of these two key outputs of individual security analysts. We find that analysts with superior earnings forecasts issue significantly more profitable recommendations than those with less accurate forecasts. The average annual recommendatio...

Equity analysts’ target price can be decomposed into two components: the earnings forecast and the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio forecast, with the former containing shortterm earnings news and the latter containing news about long-term earnings growth and discount rates. Using a large database of target prices from 1997 to 2004, we document that both components are important in driving target ...

This paper projects lifetime Social Security earnings until retirement using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to Social Security records of annual earnings from 1951 through 1993. We first develop, estimate and test gender-specific multiple regression models of ten-year earnings intervals using the matched 1984 SIPP panel. We find strong relationships pred...

This paper studies whether managers use investor information they learn from the stock market when making forward-looking disclosures. Using annual management earnings forecasts from 1996 to 2010, I find that the association between forecast revisions and stock price changes over the revision periods is stronger when there is more informed trading. Further, the effect of investor information on...

This paper projects lifetime Social Security earnings until retirement using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to Social Security records of annual earnings from 1951 through 1993. We first develop, estimate and test gender-specific multiple regression models of ten-year earnings intervals using the matched 1984 SIPP panel. We find strong relationships pred...

Previous studies show that analysts’ compensation is not linked to earnings forecast accuracy. We evidence however that analysts have incentives to issue accurate forecasts. We show that brokerage houses reward their best forecasters by assigning them to large, mature firms. Covering such firms increases the potential for future compensation as these firms generate a great deal of investment ba...

Building on the research on immigrant earnings reviewed in the first article of this series, "Research on Immigrant Earnings," the preceding article, "Adding Immigrants to Microsimulation Models," linked research results to various issues essential for incorporating immigrant earnings into microsimulation models. The discussions of that article were in terms of a closed system. That is, it exam...

This study examines whether firms just above and just below three earnings benchmarks (loss avoidance, earnings changes, and analyst forecast) have differing levels of discretionary accruals. If discretionary accruals are a measure of earnings management, then firms above (benchmark beaters) and firms below a benchmark should have differing levels of discretionary accruals. Dechow et al. (2003)...