分析師扮演著公司與投資大眾之間的資訊中介者角色。本文旨在探討企業研發支出對分析師預測品質的影響，以及企業聘雇屬於產業專家會計師是否能夠緩和研發支出所引發的盈餘管理及代理問題，並進而改善分析師預測品質。本文援引Balsam (2003)之定義，計算會計師事務所於各產業之市場佔有率(auditor industry market share)。作為產業專家之代理變數。實證結果發現：(1)分析師離散性與整合分析師間私有利益的程度，與公司研發費用多寡有關。研發費用愈高的公司，分析師的離散程度及整合分析師間的私有利益也愈高；(2)透過產業專家查核，可以緩和研發費用支出所引發的盈餘操縱及代理問題，因此研究發展費用透過產業專家會計師查核，可以提升企業的會計盈餘資訊品質，以降低分析師盈餘預測的離散程度及降低分析師間整合私有資訊的利益。 / Analysts, as an informational intermediary, produce research reports that include forecasts of future earnings, thus fulfill an important role in capital market. The objective of this paper is to investigate the association between analyst forecast’s quality and firm’s R&D expenditure. Recent work has hypothesized that intangible assets affect analyst forecast’s quality. Extending this literature, we hypothesized that firm seek to reduce the degree of earnings’ management and agency’s cost from R&D expenditure by retaining high quality auditor firms, auditor industry expertise, and then increase analyst forecast’s quality. We measure auditor industry expertise based on Balsam (2003). We find that more R&D expenditure increases analyst forecast’s dispersion and enhances the benefits of aggregating individual analysts’ forecasts. Consistent with our hypothesis, we document that auditor industry expertise can mitigate the degree of earnings’ management and agency’s cost from R&D expenditure. We also find that firms retaining auditor industry expertise are more likely to enhance the accounting information quality, decrease analyst forecast’s dispersion, and eliminate the benefits of aggregating individual analysts’ forecasts.

Defining ambiguity as investor's uncertainty about the precision of the observed information, Chapter One constructs an empirical measure of ambiguity based on analysts' earnings forecast information, and finds that the market tends to react more negatively to highly ambiguous bad news, while it tends to be less responsive to highly ambiguous good news. This result supports the theoretical argument of Epstein and Schneider (2003, 2008) that ambiguity-averse investors take a worst-case assessment of the information precision, when they are uncertain about the information precision. In addition, Chapter One shows that returns on stocks exposed to highly ambiguous and intangible information are more negatively skewed. Chapter Two finds that certain traders are informed about either the forthcoming analysts' forecasts or long-term value of the stock, and informed traders prefer to use medium-size trades to exploit their private information advantage. Specifically, medium-size trade imbalance prior to the forecast announcements is positively correlated with the nature of forecast revisions, while in the days immediately after the forecasts medium-size trade imbalance is positively correlated with future stock returns for up to four months. Small-size trade imbalance is also positively correlated with future returns but only following downward revisions. In contrast, it is also shown that large trades placed right after the forecasts are unprofitable and generate slightly negative profits in the long run. Overall, our results are consistent with the "stealth trading hypothesis" proposed by Barclay and Warner (1993).

I explore whether participation on Estimize.com, a crowdsourced earnings-forecasting platform aimed primarily at novices, improves professional analysts’ forecast accuracy and career outcomes. Estimize provides its contributors with frequent and timely feedback on their forecast performance and offers them a new channel for disseminating their forecasts to a wider public, features that could help analysts improve their forecast accuracy and raise their online visibility. Using proprietary data obtained from Estimize and a difference-in-differences research design, I find that IBES analysts who are active on Estimize improve their EPS forecast accuracy by 13% relative to the sample-mean forecast error, as well as reduce forecast bias. These improvements in performance vary predictably in ways consistent with learning through feedback. Additionally, I find increased market reaction to the positive earnings-forecasts revisions issued by analysts who are active on Estimize. I also find that analysts active on Estimize enjoy incremental positive career outcomes after controlling for forecast accuracy. My results suggest that professional analysts can learn to become better forecasters through online feedback and consequently garner more attention from the market. My results also suggest analysts can improve their career outcomes by gaining additional online visibility. / Business Administration/Accounting

Globalization has led to the growth of international financial markets, as one of the results, the EU adopted IFRS in 2005 to meet the need of accounting globalization and harmonization. This action has triggered a debate about whether the adoption of IFRS is beneficial to accounting quality and information comparability. Meanwhile, China, playing a key role in the global economic development stage, realizes the importance of accounting harmonization and attempts to move towards the IFRS as well. However, to reach the goal that the Chinese companies produce financial statements that are the same as those that apply IFRS, there is still a long way to go. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether the adoption of IFRS by EU has enhanced the quality of financial reporting and accounting information comparability. Additionally, the thesis further identified the seminal undertakings for the convergence of IFRS in Europe and pointed out the implication for China’s convergence with IFRS. The empirical findings in this thesis were obtained through qualitative interviews. The empirical findings suggest that accounting quality and information comparability has been enhanced with EU’s strong and full enforcement with IFRS. With the confidence in IFRS which is gained from the success of the EU’s adoption of IFRS, a coherent result was found that the convergence towards IFRS would also benefit China in accounting quality and information comparability, and further lead to more international investments. However, when it comes to the question whether China should emulate EU’s example to adopt IFRS directly or keep CAS (Chinese Accounting Standards) which is similar to IFRS, two mixed opinions were obtained basically from Europe side and China side. Through in-depth analysis with these empirical findings, the conclusion is that it is necessary for China to take steps to build intensive programs to enhance its capacity of the adoption of IFRS, so that it could adapt itself to the fact that the IFRS is already making its way around the world as a single set of high quality global accounting standards.

本研究旨在探討管理當局自願性盈餘預測與權益資金成本之關聯性，檢視管理當局發布盈餘預測頻率之影響是否反應於權益資金成本上，並進一步檢視管理當局之聲譽是否為影響權益資金成本的因素之一。 在本研究的實證分析結果中，發現管理當局發布自願性盈餘預測之頻率與權益資金成本呈顯著負相關，表示管理當局發布盈餘預測的次數越多時，權益資金成本越低。 在管理當局聲譽對於權益資金成本的影響，本研究實證分析結果發現，管理當局之聲譽與權益資金成本亦呈顯著負相關，管理當局聲譽以管理當局預測誤差和分析師預測誤差來衡量，當管理當局的盈餘預測誤差小於分析師盈餘預測誤差時，投資人認為管理當局對盈餘的預測有效且值得信賴，此時管理當局聲譽提高，投資人認為取得有用的資訊，進而降低企業權益資金成本。 / The primary objective of this thesis is to explore whether the frequency of management forecasts is related to the cost of equity capital. In addition, I further examine whether the association is stronger when management has better reputation. Basing on a sample of S&P 500 listed firms during 2000-2009, I find that, consistent with my prediction, cost of firm’s equity capital decreases with the frequency of management earning forecasts after controlling for other determinants well-documented to be related to cost of equity capital. Second, I find that cost of equity capital is negatively related to the reputation of management; however, I do not find that the association between cost of equity capital and the frequency of management systematically vary with the reputation of management.

本研究以台灣上市櫃公司及分析師投資報告為研究對象，探討會計師忙碌程度與審計品質之關聯性，以及產生學習或互斥效果。審計品質以裁決性應計項目、財務報表重編及迎合或擊敗分析師預期三種特性進行分析。 研究結果發現，會計師忙碌程度與裁決性應計項目、財務報表重編及迎合或擊敗分析師預期皆呈現顯著負相關。此結果表示，會計師忙碌程度愈高，受查公司管理當局進行盈餘管理之可能性愈低。本研究藉此結果推論，會計師忙碌程度愈高，透過累積查核經驗，促進知識改善，產生正向的學習效果，進而提高審計品質。 / This thesis examines the association between the busyness of auditors at partner level and audit quality and whether the association stems from learning effect or crowding-out effect, by using the listed firms’ data and the analysts’ reports in Taiwan. I use the following three measures of audit quality to examine my hypotheses: discretionary accruals, financial restatement, and meet or beat analyst forecast. The empirical results indicate that firms experience lower discretionary accruals, are less likely to restate financial statements and have lower likelihood of meeting or beating analysts’ expectations when auditors are busier. The results are consistent with the notion that auditor busyness is positively related to audit quality. Taken together, the findings provide strong evidence in favor for learning effect rather than crowding-out effect of auditor busyness. Further analyses reveal that the results remain unchanged, regardless of lead auditor busyness or concurring auditor busyness.