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Analyst Herding Around Management Forecasts

  • Mikiharu NomaEmail author
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Part of the Advances in Japanese Business and Economics book series (AJBE, volume 6)

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of management forecasts on analyst forecasts in Japan. Almost all listed firms in Japan provide management forecasts. Thus, it is possible to investigate the relationship between management and analyst forecasts for Japanese firms without any special consideration of reasons behind the issuance of management forecasts. We first show that management forecasts provided by managers at the time of release of the prior year’s annual and current semi-annual financial results are slightly higher than analyst forecasts. The results suggest that managers have incentives to provide forecasts that exceed analyst forecasts. We then analyze the daily differences between management and analyst forecasts to investigate any convergence between the two forecasts upon the release of management forecasts. We conclude that analysts herd around management forecasts in Japan and tend to trust management forecasts because they believe that managers in Japanese firms are highly disciplined.

Keywords

Analyst forecast Expectation management Herding Management forecast 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science’s Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B 23730428).

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Copyright information

© Springer Japan 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Graduate School of International Corporate StrategyHitotsubashi UniversityTokyoJapan

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