Does Financial Statement Comparability Impact Analyst Private Information Acquisition?

Abstract

This paper examines whether and how private information acquisition activities are affected by the degree of firms’ financial statement comparability. After controlling for factors relevant to private information acquisition, my analyses reveal that more comparable financial information increases private information acquisition. Further analyses show that the positive effect of comparability on analysts' private information acquisition behavior is more pronounced for firms with intense competition. The positive association between accounting comparability and private information acquisition decreases with the portfolio complexity, increases with moving-up career, and increases with firm-specific forecasting experience. A number of sensitivity analyses assure that my findings are robust to endogeneity concerns, alternative samples, and alternative measures.

Date of Award	15 Aug 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Yangxin YU (Supervisor), Xindong ZHU (Co-supervisor), Xiangang XIN (Supervisor) & Zhifeng Yang (External Co-Supervisor)