Abstract

Financial information from firms often contains biased information. In this study, we posit and experimentally test the idea that investors will have difficulty in unraveling known biases in management’s earnings forecasts but will be most likely to fully adjust when the information about bias is in quantitative, EPS form and the investor’s judgment is compatible with that bias information (also in quantitative, EPS form). Results from three experiments suggest that indeed quantification and compatibility are beneficial for unraveling managerial bias, but even under these conditions not all investors are able to unravel. We also show that this result is robust to several moderator variables that capture factors that are commonly found in the management earnings forecast setting. Our study has implications for firm managers, regulators, and investors.

摘要

来自公司的财务信息通常包含有偏见的信息。在这项研究中，我们假设并通过实验检验了这样一种观点，即投资者将难以揭示管理层盈利预测中的已知偏差，但当有关偏差的信息为定量、EPS 形式且投资者的判断与偏差信息（也是定量的，EPS 形式）。三个实验的结果表明，量化和兼容性确实有利于消除管理偏差，但即使在这些条件下，也并非所有投资者都能消除。我们还表明，该结果对几个调节变量具有稳健性，这些调节变量捕获了管理收益预测设置中常见的因素。我们的研究对公司经理、监管者、