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Journal of Accounting Research Vol. 51 No. 2 2013

What Do Management Earnings Forecasts Convey About the Macroeconomy?

Samuel B. Bonsall1; Zahn Bozanic1; Paul E. Fischer2

1 Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University , · 2 The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

open access

Abstract

We decompose quantitative management earnings forecasts into macroeconomic and firm‐specific components to determine the extent to which voluntary disclosure provided by management has macroeconomic information content. We provide evidence that the forecasts of bellwether firms, which are defined as firms in which macroeconomic news explains the greatest amount of variation in the forecasts, provide timely information to the market about the macroeconomy when bundled with earnings announcements. Further, we show that bellwether firms provide timely information about both industry‐specific events and broader economic events. Finally, we document that the macroeconomic news in individual forecasts is more pronounced for bad news and point forecasts.

DOI
10.1111/1475-679x.12007
Volume
51
Issue
2
Pages
225-266
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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