abstract
Sell-side analysts, on balance, have incentives to emphasize good company news and
downplay the bad, resulting in inefficient forecasts. We conjecture that this behavior
generates a demand for forecasts from conservative analysts who unwind this pattern,
at least in part, resulting in more efficient forecasts. To investigate, we introduce a
measure of analyst conservatism and assess the market reaction to analysts’ forecast
revisions conditioned on their past levels of conservatism. We find a stronger market
reaction to forecast revisions by more conservative analysts, and that this result is
heightened for companies with greater institutional investor following.