Identifier

etd-06062014-115148

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Accounting

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

Income classification shifting involves opportunistically misclassifying core expenses into nonrecurring items in order to boost core earnings. Recent studies have documented large sample evidence of its existence (e.g. McVay 2006; Fan et al.,2010; Barua et al.,2010). Managers engage in income classification shifting because they believe the market in general and financial analysts in particular focus on core earnings. If financial analysts are experts in forecasting permanent earnings, they should be expected to identify reported core earnings that have been inflated through classification shifting and revise their future earnings forecast accordingly. Consistent with my prediction, I find that given the same amount of earnings news, analysts revise their future quarterly earnings forecasts by half as much for classification shifters than for non-classification shifters, suggesting analysts recognize that income classification shifters’ core earnings are less likely to persist into the future. However, I also find that analysts fail to fully gauge the impact of classification shifting on future earnings, leading to more optimistically biased forecasts for classification shifters. Finally, classification shifting makes it more difficult for analysts to forecast earnings so that their forecasts become less accurate.

Date

2013

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Cheng, Cheng-Shing Agnes

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.606

Included in

Accounting Commons

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