Managers' EPS Forecasts: Nickeling and Diming the Market?
研究发现近半数管理层年度每股收益预测以镍币间隔（如5美分）结尾，比实际盈余更常见；这些预测更不准确且更乐观，受不确定性、信息保护和自利动机驱动，并导致分析师跟风预测。
ABSTRACT: Nearly half of managers' forecasts of annual earnings per share (EPS) end in nickel intervals, whereas only about 20 percent of actual EPS end in nickel intervals. We provide evidence on the attributes, determinants, and consequences of this systematic wedge between managers' predictions and firms' ex post actual performance. Managers' nickel forecasts are not simply a benign response to uncertainty about upcoming earnings, because nickel forecasts are not only less accurate, but also they are more optimistically biased than non-nickel forecasts. In addition to uncertainty, efforts to protect the firm's proprietary information and self-serving opportunism in response to managers' economic incentives also play incremental roles in explaining managers' propensity to issue forecasts heaped at nickel intervals. We also find that managers' nickel forecasts spur even active analysts to issue forecasts heaped at nickel intervals, although analysts' forecast revisions partially adjust for the optimism and noise in managers' nickel forecasts.