Download or read book Corporate Disclosure Policy and Analyst Behavior written by Mark H. Lang and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the relation between the disclosure practices of firms, the number of analysts following each firm, and properties of the analysts' earnings forecasts. Using data from the Financial Analysts Federation Corporate Information Committee Report (FAF Report), we provide evidence that firms with more informative disclosure policies have a larger analyst following, more accurate analyst earnings forecasts, less dispersion among individual analyst forecasts and less volatility in forecast revisions. The results enhance our understanding of the role of analysts in capital markets. Further, they suggest that potential benefits to disclosure include increased investor following, reduced estimation risk and reduced information asymmetry, each of which have been shown to reduce a firm's cost of capital in theoretical research.