A major purpose of the Estes study was to determine, by using questionnaires, the expected usefulness of current cost information for various classes of assets, both current and long term.2 Two assumptions were made in conducting the study: (1) current costs were objectively measurable, and (2) the current cost information would be of a supplementary nature only. The sample was selected from three organizations: the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts, the National Association of Bank Loan Officers and Credit Men (Robert Morris Associates), and the Financial Executives Institute. These groups were chosen because Estes believed they closely paralleled two major financial statement user groups: (1) investors, both current and potential, and (2) lenders. Questionnaires were sent to 300 members from each group. A total of 338 or 37.8% responded. The results of the study were that 81 percent of the item responses

upon establishing a means of distinguishing which of two alternative disclosure treatments is the more -useful. The traditional means of attempting to make such distinction is through rational argumentation. Rational argumentation is very useful in exploring and drawing out the logical implications of alternative treatments, but may not be sufficient to enable selection of the better treatment. Recently attempts have been made to employ the Predictive as the means of distinguishing the better of two alternative accounting measurements. This criterion selects as the better of two alternative accounting measurements the one which has the greater to predict a given event considered to be of particular importance.' Surely the application of the predictive ability criterion in accounting research can accomplish much, but continual effort should be made to bring other research methods to bear on the problem of improving accounting disclosure. This paper presents an effort to develop a criterion

Leverage, Valuation, Net income ratio, Capital gearing

Neil C. Churchill, Audit Recommendations and Management Auditing: A Case Study and Some Remarks, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 4, Empirical Research in Accounting: Selected Studies 1966 (1966), pp. 128-151

One hesitates to write history as it happens, or to draw policy lessons from current events. The conference took place in May 2008 - after the government-assisted takeover of Bear Stearns but before a capital market downturn fueled a system-wide liquidity crisis, with successive insolvencies at IndyMac, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, AIG, WaMu, and, as I write, Citigroup. But it would be odd to comment on capital market regulation without mentioning the events of the last three months. I am first to acknowledge that anything I might have written in May would not have foreseen the crisis or linked capital market regulation to financial institutions, which in the US have been conventionally treated as discrete in discourse and institutions (e.g., U.S. Treasury 2008; Leuz and Wysocki 2008).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether financial analysts with superior earnings forecasting ability can be distinguished on the basis of ex post forecast accuracy. I explore the question by estimating and comparing average accuracy across individuals, and by considering whether the observed distribution of analyst forecast accuracies differs from the distribution expected if their relative performances each year were purely random. Overall, I do not find systematic differences in forecast accuracy across individuals. Financial press coverage suggests there are superior financial analysts. For example, Institutional Investor's annual All American Research Team includes analysts rated by money managers as superior on a variety of criteria, including earnings forecasting, ability to pick stocks, and the quality of written reports. Clearly, financial analyst services other than forecast accuracy are valued by their clients. I focus on only one activity, earnings forecasting, for two reasons. First, forecast data are available, quantitative, and can be evaluated against observable earnings outcomes. Services such as insightful, well-written research reports are harder to evaluate quantitatively. Second, academic use of analyst forecasts as earnings expectations data in capital markets empir-

Auditing, Extrapolation, Time-series, Cost variance

Ian R. C. Eggleton, [Discussion of Patterns, Prototypes, and Predictions: An Exploratory Study]: A Reply, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 14, Studies on Human Information Processing in Accounting (1976), pp. 145-158

Prediction, Decision making, Sequential patters, Time-series

William C. Pyle, Nabil Elias, Summary of Discussion by William C. Pyle of "The Effects of Human Asset Statements on the Investment Decision" and a Reply, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 10, Empirical Research in Accounting: Selected Studies 1972 (1972), pp. 234-240