Accounting Comparability Site Visit And Analyst Forecast Accuracy

Securities analysts act as information intermediaries for capital markets.They acquire,process and disseminate the information to the investors through issuing earning forecast reports,thus reducing information asymmetry.The main sources of information collected by analysts are public and private information.Are these two kinds of information complementary or competitive?What kind of information source do the analysts prefer to rely on?And which source is more helpful for improving analysts' earnings forecasts accuracy?This paper examines the above problems from the aspects of accounting comparability and site visit to measure the quality of public information and the collection of private information.This paper takes the A-share listed companies of Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2016 as the research object,and obtains the site visit and forecast data from CSMAR database.We use accounting comparability to measure the quality of public information and site visit to measure the acquisition of private information.Based on De Franco's measure model,the accounting comparability is calculated.First,we study how accounting comparability affects the analyst's site visit behavior.Second,we discuss the influence of accounting comparability as the quality of public information disclosure on the accuracy of analyst's earnings forecasts.Then,using the difference-in-difference model,we examine the influences of private information collection behavior on the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts.Finally,we further test which effects of these two information sources in enhancing the analyst's earnings forecast accuracy are more significant in terms of accounting comparability and site visit.The empirical study result turns out:(1)The stronger the accounting comparability of the target company,the greater the probability of being investigated,indicating that the public information and private information is complementary rather than competitive.(2)From the perspective of public information quality,accounting comparability can significantly improve the accuracy of analyst' earnings forecast.(3)From the perspective of private information collection,the analysts' earnings forecast accuracy is improved significantly after site visit.(4)For the two sources of information,site visit has a more pronounced impact on improving the analyst's earnings forecast accuracy compared to accounting comparability.This paper explores the impact of accounting comparability and site visit on the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts from the perspective of public and private information.It not only expands the research on the economic consequences of accounting comparability,but also deepens the research on the influencing factors of site visit and analysts' earnings forecasts' accuracy.The result is beneficial for analysts to allocate their limited time and resources to obtain more useful information for earnings forecasts,and better help investors to make effective decisions.