Professional Expectations: Accuracy and Diagnosis of Errors
分析专业预测师在预测公司每股收益时的错误大小、来源、不同公司的预测难度差异，以及预测误差与分析师意见分歧的关系。
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the errors made by professional forecasters (analysts) in estimating earnings per share for a large number of firms over a number of years. We have demonstrated in a previous paper that consensus (average) estimates of earnings per share play a key role in share price determination. In this paper, we examine consensus estimates with respect to the following questions: (1) What is the size and pattern of analysts' errors? (2) What is the source of errors? (3) Are some firms more difficult to predict than others? (4) Is there an association between errors in forecasts and divergence of analysts' estimates?