This study examines whether analyst coverage affects the informativeness of income smoothing. I find that income smoothing enhances earnings informativeness more greatly for firms with high analyst coverage than for firms with low analyst coverage. The results suggest that income smoothing more efficiently communicates private information to investors when firms are followed by more analysts, c...

Theory suggests that managers issue earnings forecasts to reduce information asymmetry. An earnings forecast is more effective in reducing information asymmetry if it contains earnings news that is relatively more informative about the firm’s value. We hypothesize that a manager is more likely to issue an earnings forecast if investors perceive that earnings are more informative. We measure ear...

This study draws on prior research on corporate governance and examines whether the informativeness of earnings, proxied by the earnings±returns relationship, varies with the fraction of outside directors serving on the board and board size. The results suggest that earnings of ®rms with the smallest boards in the sample (with a minimum of ®ve board members) are perceived as being more informat...

We argue that high quality firms that expect larger quantity of cash flows in the near future are more likely to actively smooth earnings via discretionary accruals before seasonal equity offerings to reduce underpricing. If high quality firms are confident about future earnings, it is also plausible to assume that they also push their offer prices up more aggressively, and lessen the degree of...

We investigate whether competing information, primarily analyst reports, reduces the usefulness of earnings announcements. Our examination of this issue has two parts. First, we examine whether investors’ use of analyst reports, as measured by the absolute abnormal returns to these reports, substitutes for their use of earnings announcements. We find that market reactions to earnings announceme...