This study examines the role of financial statement comparability in mitigating analysts' optimism for accruals. Prior research shows that sell-side analysts do not fully incorporate accrual information in anticipating future earnings and thus tend to issue more optimistic forecasts for firms with a higher level of accruals. We posit that financial statement comparability allows analysts to use industry peers' information in assessing the persistence of accruals, thereby lowering their optimism for accruals. We find that analysts' accrual-related optimism is significantly moderated for firms with a high degree of financial statement comparability. Further, we disaggregate financial statement comparability into accrual comparability and cash flow comparability and find that the inverse relation between comparability and analysts' optimism for accruals is driven by accrual comparability rather than cash flow comparability. Moreover, exploiting the mandatory adoption of IFRS as an exogenous increase in comparability, we find that analysts’ optimism for accruals decreases significantly following the IFRS adoption while it does not show a significant change in non-IFRS-adopting countries during the same period. Collectively, the results suggest that financial statement comparability helps analysts process and interpret accrual information, thereby improving their forecasting activities.

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财务报表的可比性和分析师对应计费用的乐观态度

本研究探讨了财务报表可比性在降低分析师对应计费用的乐观情绪方面的作用。先前的研究表明，卖方分析师在预测未来收益时并未完全纳入应计信息，因此倾向于对应计费用水平较高的公司做出更为乐观的预测。我们认为，财务报表的可比性使分析师能够利用行业同行的信息来评估应计费用的持续性，从而降低他们对应计费用的乐观态度。我们发现，对于财务报表可比性较高的公司，分析师与应计利润相关的乐观情绪明显减弱。此外，我们将财务报表可比性分解为应计可比性和现金流量可比性，并发现可比性与分析师对应计项目的乐观情绪之间的反比关系是由应计可比性而不是现金流量可比性驱动的。此外，利用强制采用国际财务报告准则作为可比性的外生增加，我们发现分析师对应计利润的乐观情绪在采用国际财务报告准则后显着下降，而同期未采用国际财务报告准则的国家并没有显示出显着变化。总的来说，结果表明，财务报表的可比性有助于分析师处理和解释应计信息，从而改善他们的预测活动。