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...

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...

Discovering latent connections between seemingly unconnected documents and constructing “stories” from scattered pieces of evidence are staple tasks in intelligence analysis. We have worked with government intelligence analysts to understand the strategies they use to make connections. Beyond techniques like clustering that aim to provide an initial broad summary of large document collections, ...

In this study, we employ an innovative new methodology suggested by Bernhardt et al. (2006) to examine the herding (or anti-herding) behavior of German analysts in case of earnings forecasts. Our methodology avoids well-known shortcomings often encountered in related studies, such as, e.g., correlated information signals, unexpected common shocks to earnings, systematic optimism or pessimism or...

Information modeling (IM) is the process of identifying information needs and models based on user requirements and systems analysts’ perceptions during systems analysis and design. When IM is done correctly, it facilitates communication between the analysts and end-users about the final software product. In addition, successful IM provides a formal basis for both the analysts and the end-users...

Moody’s analysts and sell-side equity analysts adjust GAAP earnings as part of their research. We show that adjusted earnings definitions of Moody’s analysts are significantly lower than those of equity analysts when companies exhibit higher downside risk, as measured by volatility in idiosyncratic stock returns, volatility in negative market returns, poor earnings, and loss status. Relative to...

Homeland security intelligence analysts need help finding relevant information quickly in a rapidly increasing volume of incoming raw data. Many different AI techniques are needed to handle this deluge of data. This paper describes initial investigations in the application of recommender systems to this problem. It illustrates various recommender systems technologies and suggests scenarios for ...

The aim of this paper is to identify who is a systems analyst in organizations in a turbulent world. We see a need to radically rethink the way in which information systems are developed. There have appeared some efforts to create systems analysis methods for business professionals, for example, Alter (2002) and Bednar (2000). To promote the development of such methods, there is a need to theor...

We examine the relation between analysts’ earnings forecasts and firms’ intangible assets, including technology-based intangibles, brand names, and recognized intangibles. We predict that high information complexity of intangible assets increases the difficulty for analysts to assimilate information and increases analysts’ forecast error of intangibles-intensive firms. We find a positive associ...

This paper examines the relationship of analysts’ coverage, forecasting errors and earnings management. It corroborates the role of analysts as gatekeepers by finding that analysts enhance transparency and reduce the scope of earnings management. To identify analysts’ coverage we used the I/B/E/S, from where we also obtained information on the consensus projections of analysts for listed Brazil...