We examine the relation between accounting reporting complexity and analysts’ performance and whether analysts’ qualifications, experience, and expertise in specific financial domains help them more effectively process complex information. We document an inverse relation between complexity and analysts’ performance. Further, we show that analysts’ firm-specific experience, industry focus, and CFA certification alleviate some of the adverse effects of complexity, whereas analysts’ general experience does not appear to do so. Using an XBRL-based approach, we also develop new measures of analysts’ expertise and find that expertise in the areas of fair value, derivatives and pension are more valuable than other analyst characteristics in attenuating the negative effects of complexity arising from transactions and events in these areas. Overall, this study underscores the importance of analyst characteristics and the need to simplify the complex disclosures in the notes to the financial statements.

我们研究了会计报告复杂性与分析师绩效之间的关系，以及分析师在特定金融领域的资历，经验和专业知识是否有助于他们更有效地处理复杂信息。我们记录了复杂性与分析师绩效之间的反比关系。此外，我们表明，分析师的公司特定经验，行业重点和CFA认证可减轻复杂性的某些不利影响，而分析师的一般经验似乎并没有这样做。使用基于XBRL的方法，我们还开发了分析分析师专业知识的新方法，发现公允价值，衍生工具和养老金领域的专业知识比其他分析师特征更有价值，可以减轻因交易和事件产生的复杂性带来的负面影响。这些区域。全面的，