Expectations Formation with Fat-tailed Processes: Evidence from Sales Forecasts
Statistical Finance
2022-10-20 v1 General Finance
Abstract
We empirically analyze a large sample of firm sales growth expectations. We find that the relationship between forecast errors and lagged revision is non-linear. Forecasters underreact to typical (positive or negative) news about future sales, but overreact to very significant news. To account for this non-linearity, we propose a simple framework, where (1) sales growth dynamics have a fat-tailed high frequency component and (2) forecasters use a simple linear rule. This framework qualitatively fits several additional features of data on sales growth dynamics, forecast errors, and stock returns.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2210.10169,
title = {Expectations Formation with Fat-tailed Processes: Evidence from Sales Forecasts},
author = {Eugene Larsen-Hallock and Adam Rej and David Thesmar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.10169},
year = {2022}
}