Our study is based upon the idea that more efficient firms have more stable earnings, so analysts’should make smaller absolute errors if they can tell which firms are more efficient. Under the assumption that analysts seek to minimize their absolute forecast errors, we expect that analysts with better knowledge regarding firms’ operating efficiency will use this knowledge to forecast more accurately, i.e. to reduce their absolute forecast errors. We argue that the frontier-based measure is more sophisticated and proxies for a far more sophisticated level of industry knowledge. Our comparison of these different efficiency measures, thus, tests which one better proxies for the information analysts use when they forecast earnings. We argue that this comparison provides evidence regarding how sophisticated analysts are in their use of the informationfromfirms’ financial statements.