Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence from Guidance Reports

• In Event: Tax, Loss, and Uncertainty

Abstract

The current archival management guidance literature relies on either hand collected samples or commercial datasets provided by Thomson Reuters’ “IBES Guidance” product line. Hand collected samples are relatively small and their creation involves substantial amounts of researcher effort, while IBES guidance is restricted to quantitative forecasts of relatively few headline items. This paper introduces and evaluates a new commercial source of management guidance called Thomson Reuters Guidance Reports that overcomes some of the issues related to hand collection and IBES guidance. After describing the Guidance Reports dataset, we use it to replicate Lansford et al. [2013] to show that one achieves the same inferences with the Guidance Reports as with the costly hand collected sample assembled in Lansford et al. [2013]. Finally, we use the dataset to extend the guidance literature by demonstrating that macroeconomic un- certainty reduces management forecast disaggregation.

Author

• Oliver Binz, Duke University