TY - BOOK A1 - Gell, Sebastian T1 - Determinants of earnings forecast error, earnings forecast revision and earnings forecast accuracy N2 - ​Earnings forecasts are ubiquitous in today’s financial markets. They are essential indicators of future firm performance and a starting point for firm valuation. Extremely inaccurate and overoptimistic forecasts during the most recent financial crisis have raised serious doubts regarding the reliability of such forecasts. This thesis therefore investigates new determinants of forecast errors and accuracy. In addition, new determinants of forecast revisions are examined. More specifically, the thesis answers the following questions: 1) How do analyst incentives lead to forecast errors? 2) How do changes in analyst incentives lead to forecast revisions?, and 3) What factors drive differences in forecast accuracy? Y1 - 2012 SN - 978-3-8349-3936-4 SN - 978-3-8349-3937-1 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-8349-3937-1 N1 - Titel in der Buchreihe: Quantitatives Controlling PB - Springer Gabler CY - Wiesbaden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klettke, Tanja A1 - Homburg, Carsten A1 - Gell, Sebastian T1 - How to measure analyst forecast effort JF - European Accounting Review N2 - We introduce a new way to measure the forecast effort that analysts devote to their earnings forecasts by measuring the analyst's general effort for all covered firms. While the commonly applied effort measure is based on analyst behaviour for one firm, our measure considers analyst behaviour for all covered firms. Our general effort measure captures additional information about analyst effort and thus can identify accurate forecasts. We emphasise the importance of investigating analyst behaviour in a larger context and argue that analysts who generally devote substantial forecast effort are also likely to devote substantial effort to a specific firm, even if this effort might not be captured by a firm-specific measure. Empirical results reveal that analysts who devote higher general forecast effort issue more accurate forecasts. Additional investigations show that analysts' career prospects improve with higher general forecast effort. Our measure improves on existing methods as it has higher explanatory power regarding differences in forecast accuracy than the commonly applied effort measure. Additionally, it can address research questions that cannot be examined with a firm-specific measure. It provides a simple but comprehensive way to identify accurate analysts. Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09638180.2014.909291 SN - 0963-8180 VL - 24 IS - 1 SP - 129 EP - 146 PB - Taylor & Francis CY - London ER -