Finance

Accounting

Sociology

Business

Work (physics)

Pure mathematics

Earnings

Population

Peer effects

Geographic variation

Dimension (graph theory)

Mathematics

Geographical distance

Geodesy

Demography

Engineering

Econometrics

Psychology

Instrumental variable

Economics

Geography

Microeconomics

Market liquidity

Incentive

Location

Social psychology

Mechanical engineering

Contemporary Accounting Research

ABSTRACT Because of clear economic links among industry peers, prior work has focused on documenting industry peer effects in various settings. Yet, while links also exist among firms in the same geographic area, few studies document geographic peer effects. We fill this gap by examining whether there are geographic peer effects in management earnings forecasts. We find that the likelihood that a firm voluntarily provides an earnings forecast is sensitive to the extent to which other firms in the same geographic area provide earnings forecasts. This geographic peer effect in forecasting is stronger for firms with greater exposure to local institutional investors, and when firms do forecast, liquidity improves more when a larger fraction of their geographic peers forecast. Furthermore, we use instrumental variable techniques to help alleviate the concern that these geographic peer effects are driven by omitted local economic factors that can lead firms to make similar disclosure decisions. Overall, our findings suggest that geographic peer effects in disclosure choices arise in part due to firms responding to capital market incentives created by local investors. Our study, therefore, contributes to the literature by documenting a unique dimension of forecasting decisions.

Geographic Peer Effects in Management Earnings Forecasts*