The Effect of Media Competition on Analyst Forecast Properties: Cross-Country Evidence
基于32个国家2000-2012年数据，发现媒体竞争越强，分析师预测越准确、偏差越小、分歧越低，尤其对机构持股少、分析师覆盖少或业绩差的企业影响更大。
We examine the effect of media competition on analyst forecast properties in an international setting using 113,436 firm-year observations from 32 countries spanning 2000 through 2012. We find that firms in countries with stronger media competition enjoy more accurate, less optimistically biased, and less dispersed analyst forecasts. The effects of media competition on the properties of analyst forecasts are stronger for firms with lower institutional ownership, for firms followed by fewer analysts or by analysts from smaller brokerage houses, and for firms with weaker financial performance. This suggests that media competition plays a more pronounced role in shaping the information environment when information from nonmedia channels is likely to be limited or of lower quality. Finally, we find that analysts in countries with stronger media competition tend to follow more firms, suggesting that stronger media competition reduces analysts’ information acquisition costs, which in turn, improves the properties of their forecasts.