A Study of the Impact of Changes in the New Revenue Standard on the Quality of Analysts’ Earnings Forecasts

Abstract

Revenue is an important part of financial reporting, which not only reflects the past operating conditions of enterprises, but also is an important basis for predicting the future development of enterprises. In recent years, the implementation effect of the new income standard has received widespread attention in the academic community. Therefore, taking Chinese listed companies from 2015 to 2019 as a sample, using the double difference model, based on the information asymmetry theory and limited attention theory, the impact of the implementation of the new revenue standard on the quality of analysts’ earnings forecast is empirically studied, in order to provide useful reference for the optimization of policy standards. The results show that the new revenue standard improves the comparability and information disclosure quality of enterprise accounting information, improves the information environment, and allows analysts to obtain more valuable information through publicly available information at low cost, which improves the accuracy of analysts’ forecasts, reduces the divergence of analysts’ forecasts, and significantly improves the quality of analysts’ earnings forecasts. The analysis of the heterogeneity of analyst earnings forecasts shows that the stronger the audit oversight, the more significant the positive impact of the change in revenue standards on analysts’ forecasts.