Publication Type
PhD Dissertation
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
3-2026
Abstract
I examine whether ethnicity similarity between sell-side analysts and corporate senior officers shapes analysts’ forecasting behavior. The baseline results show that ethnicity similarity is associated with higher forecast frequency and larger initial forecast errors. Importantly, I find that the larger initial forecast error associated with ethnicity similarity comes from overestimation and disappears for analysts’ last forecasts, consistent with bias coming from innate favoritism and dissipating as public information accumulates within the fiscal year. However, the market does not discount coethnic analysts’ first forecast revisions and reacts more strongly to their last forecast revisions within the fiscal year, suggesting that investors do not fully understand the implications of ethnicity similarity. Finally, I find that ethnicity similarity is positively associated with minority analysts’ access to management during conference calls and the likelihood of analyst coverage.
Keywords
Ethnicity Similarity, Analyst Forecast, Behavioral bias
Degree Awarded
PhD in Accounting
Discipline
Accounting
Supervisor(s)
YUE, Heng
First Page
1
Last Page
67
Publisher
Singapore Management University
City or Country
Singapore
Citation
TIAN, Zichen.
Does ethnicity similarity affect analyst forecasts?. (2026). 1-67.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/853
Copyright Owner and License
Author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.