The Issuance and Informativeness of Management Long-Term Earnings Growth Forecasts
研究上市公司管理层发布的定量长期盈利增长预测，发现市场参与者需求、信息不对称、同行预测、产品市场竞争和行业盈利能力促进其发布，而业绩差和高不确定性抑制发布；这些预测平均能提供未来盈利增长的增量信息，竞争和投资者监督增强其信息含量。
SYNOPSIS This study examines quantitative long-term earnings growth (LTG) forecasts issued by publicly traded firms. While the difficulty of verifying management LTG forecasts provides incentives for self-serving disclosures, we find that stakeholder interests and forecast credibility considerations significantly constrain such tendencies. In particular, we find that demand from market participants, information asymmetry, peer LTG forecast provision, product market competition, and industry profitability drive management LTG forecast issuance, while poor performance and high uncertainty over firm growth prospects deter management LTG forecast issuance. Moreover, we provide evidence that management LTG forecasts, on average, provide incremental information about future earnings growth, and that high competition and investor monitoring increase LTG forecast informativeness, consistent with predictions of theoretical cheap talk models. Our findings also indicate that both upward and downward LTG guidance provide incremental information about future earnings growth, and that analysts revise their LTG forecasts in the direction of LTG guidance. Overall, our study contributes to the voluntary disclosure literature by providing evidence that suggests elements of a firm's disclosure environment significantly influence the issuance and informativeness of difficult-to-verify disclosures. JEL Classifications: C23; D81; D82; M41.