Overstated Quarterly Earnings and Analysts' Earnings Forecast Revisions*
研究了会计盈余夸大错误如何影响证券分析师的预测修正，发现分析师平均会忽略21%的夸大部分，表明他们能部分识别盈余夸大。
ABSTRACT A primary purpose of accounting is to provide information for decision makers. Accounting misstatements may have a detrimental effect on decision making. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) identifies earnings overstatements as being particularly troublesome to users, as indicated by SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases' emphasis on earnings' overstatement errors. This research investigates how security analysts' forecast revisions are affected by accounting earnings overstatement errors, which become known only after the analysts released their revised annual earnings forecasts. The paper investigates the clarifying role that additional information plays in analysts' revisions. The results show that analysts draw significantly different conclusions from earnings containing (unknown) overstatement errors than from accurately reported earnings. In essence, the analysts identify some of the overstatement, at least on average, by making an adjustment that effectively ignores 21 percent of the overstatement error.