Analyst Revenue Forecasts and Firm Revenue Misstatements
研究发现分析师发布的收入预测会加剧企业收入错报，尤其是当满足收入预测更重要时，企业更可能通过应计项目管理而非真实盈余管理来虚增收入。
Earnings and revenue are ranked as the two most important performance measures reported to outsiders. However, prior literature primarily focuses on management’s incentives and willingness to manipulate earnings to meet earnings benchmarks. Increasingly, analysts are releasing forecasts of financial items in addition to aggregate earnings, with revenue forecasts being the most common. We posit that management may be under similar pressure to meet revenue forecasts given their impact on firm value. As such, we examine whether analyst revenue forecasts aggravate revenue misstatements. We find that revenue misstatements are positively associated with revenue forecasts and the association is more pronounced when beating revenue forecasts is more important. We also show that several characteristics of revenue forecasts aggravate management pressure and thus the likelihood of revenue misstatements. Further analyses suggest that firms use accruals management rather than real earnings management to inflate reported revenue. Our findings may be useful to academics, investors, and regulators in examining the relationship between analyst revenue forecasts and firms’ financial reporting behavior.