PhD Research Proposal Presentation: Ken Duan
Two Essays on Analyst Knowledge and Expertise
Tuesday, October 21, 2025, at 9:00am
Ken Duan, a doctoral student at 海角精品黑料 in the area of Accounting will be presenting his research proposal entitled:
(The presentation will be conducted on Zoom)
Student Committee chair: Professor Hongping Tan
ABSTRACT
This thesis comprises two essays that examine analysts鈥� knowledge and expertise and evaluate their contribution to capital markets.
In the first essay, I investigate the role of competition analysis in financial analyst reports and its value to investors. Using textual analysis on a large dataset of U.S. analyst reports, I find that earnings forecast revisions accompanied by more competition-related discussion are more accurate. This effect is stronger when the discussion comes from analysts with greater industry expertise and when firms face more intense competition. Further analyses show that both investors and managers find these discussions informative: revisions with detailed competition analysis elicit stronger market reactions, and firms covered by more competition-focused analysts exhibit higher investment efficiency. Overall, the results indicate that competition discussions enhance analysts鈥� forecast accuracy and provide valuable insights for other market participants.
In the second essay, I investigate whether tax-specific expertise influences analysts鈥� forecasting accuracy. Using a dictionary-based measure of tax-related knowledge, I find that analysts who incorporate more tax-related discussions in their reports produce more accurate implicit effective tax rate (ETR) forecasts. These reports also yield more accurate and less optimistic earnings forecasts. Further analysis shows that investors respond positively to tax-related good news and negatively to bad news. Overall, the findings provide novel evidence that analysts possess tax-specific expertise that is valuable to capital markets.
