Seminar (Dept. of Accounting)

Theme：Memory, Retrieved Context, and Biases in Management Earnings Forecasts

Speaker：Isabel Yanyan Wang, Professor, Michigan State University

Time：2022-05-18 09:30

Address：Online Meeting

Language：Chinese/English

ABSTRACT：

This study examines whether managers’ memories associated with economic recessions affect the biases in their earnings forecasts as they encounter similar contexts. Specifically, we focus on the relation between changes in the bias in management earnings forecasts around the 2008 financial crisis and CEOs’ memories of economic recessions. To mitigate concerns of endogenous matching between firms and their CEOs, we use management earnings forecasts issued by the same firm-CEO pairs. Using a sample of annual earnings forecasts issued for fiscal years ending between 2002-2018, we find that, on average, managers’ earnings forecasts embed more pessimism even after the financial crisis was over. More importantly, the increase in pessimism is more pronounced among CEOs who accumulate more memories of past recessions and those who observe stronger unemployment shocks at their headquarter locations during the financial crisis. Further analyses show that the increased pessimism can take up to five years to return to the pre-crisis level, suggesting that learning may explain the observed changes in forecast bias. 

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

Isabel Yanyan Wang is the Deloitte/Michael Licata Endowed Professor of Accounting at Michigan State University. Her research primarily focuses on the impact of regulations and individual top executives on corporate financial reporting and disclosure behavior. She has published in top journals such as The Accounting Review, Journal of Financial Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Management Science, and Review of Accounting Studies. Her dissertation won both the Competitive Manuscript Award from the American Accounting Association and the Best Dissertation Award from the Financial Accounting and Reporting Section in 2006. In 2017, one of her published papers also won the Distinguished Contribution to the Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association. She currently serves on the editorial board of The Accounting Review and Accounting Horizons. She has taught financial accounting, international accounting, financial statement analysis, and doctoral seminars. Since joining MSU she has won the Outstanding Teacher Award (2012 & 2015), the Ronald F. Salmonson Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award (2014), and the Faculty Excellence in Research Award (2012 & 2018). In 2019, she won the Withrow Endowed Teacher-Scholar Award, which recognizes her distinguished professional service to higher education at the Broad College. She received her Ph.D in Accounting from the University of Georgia and her B.A. and M.S. in accounting from Renmin University of China.