Variable Definitions:
ACCY accuracy in analysts’ earnings forecasts, defined as the negative of the absolute difference between
the forecast and actual earnings, scaled by price;
DISP dispersion in analysts’ earnings forecasts;
AUDITOR dummy variable that takes the value of 1 (0) if the firm is affiliated with a Big 5 (non-Big 5)
auditor;
ISPEC industry specialist auditor measure, defined as the sum of the square root of the total assets of the
clients of an auditor in a specific industry divided by total sum of the square root of the total
assets of entire clients of the auditor;
SIZE logarithm of market value of equity;
SURPRISE this year’s earnings minus last years’ earnings deflated by stock price;
LOSS coded as 0 (1) for firm-year observations with positive (negative) earnings;
ZMIJ Zmijewski’s financial distress score;
HORIZON log of the average of the number of calendar days between mean forecast announcement date and
subsequent actual earnings announcement date;
NANA log of number of analysts following the client;
STDROE standard deviation of earnings over the previous five years;
EL earnings per share winsorized at 5 (5); and
INVMR inverse Mills ratio for endogenous auditor choice.
A total of 9,261 firm-year observations are used to calculate the descriptive statistics of the variables except
DISP, for which 3,749 observations are used.