The Influence of Culture and Corporate Governance on the Characteristics That Distinguish Superior Analysts

Abstract

We identify characteristics of financial analysts that have been shown to be associated with relative forecast accuracy in the United States and examine these characteristics within 10 countries. We find that relative forecast accuracy is influenced by years of experience, size of the analyst's employer, and frequency of forecast issuance for many of these countries and show that the significance of experience and employer is conditional on the type of culture and corporate governance of the country.