Author
Lardic, Sandrine
Dossou, François
Michalon, Karine
Type
Article accepté pour publication ou publié
Abstract (EN)
The recent period has highlighted a well-known phenomenon, namely the existence of a
positive bias in experts’ anticipations. Literature on this subject underlines optimism in the
financial analyst community. In this work, our significant contributions are twofold: we
provide explanatory bias prediction models which will subsequently allow the calculation of
earnings adjusted forecasts, for horizons from 1 to 24 months. We explain the bias using
macroeconomic as well as sector and firm specific variables. We obtain some important
results. In particular, the macroeconomic variables are statistically significant and their signs
are coherent with the intuition. However, we conclude that the microeconomic variables are
the main explanatory variables. From the forecast evaluation statistics viewpoints, the
adjusted forecasts make it possible quasi-systematically to improve the forecasts of the analysts.