Analyst recommendations, earnings forecasts and corporate bankruptcy: recent evidence

Authors

Stewart Jones, University of Sydney
David Johnstone, University of SydneyFollow

RIS ID

115711

Publication Details

Jones, S. & Johnstone, D. (2012). Analyst recommendations, earnings forecasts and corporate bankruptcy: recent evidence. Journal of Behavioral Finance, 13 (4), 281-298.

Abstract

This study builds on recent research by Clarke, Ferris, Jayaraman, and Lee [2006]. Based on a sample of U.S. bankruptcies between 1995 and 2001, Clarke et al. failed to find evidence of a positive bias (or overoptimism) in analyst recommendations. We extend Clarke et al.'s findings by including the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) period and using an international sample of large corporate bankruptcies (the combined total assets of our firm failure sample exceed US$1.5 trillion). We also extend their research by examining the explanatory and predictive power of earnings growth forecasts, analyst downgrades/upgrades, and analyst coverage in a firm failure model. Overall, we find significantly more evidence of analyst overoptimism than did Clarke and colleagues.