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We examine whether financial analysts are subject to limited attention. We find that when analysts have another firm in their coverage portfolio announcing earnings on the same day as the sample firm (a “concurrent announcement”), they are less likely to issue timely earnings forecasts for the sample firm's subsequent quarter than analysts without a concurrent announcement. Among the analysts who issue timely earnings forecasts, the thoroughness of their work decreases as their number of concurrent announcements increases. In addition, analysts are more sluggish in providing stock recommendations and less likely to ask questions in earnings conference calls as their number of concurrent announcements increases. Moreover, when analysts face concurrent announcements, they tend to allocate their limited attention to firms that already have rich information environments, leaving behind firms in need of attention. Overall, our evidence suggests that even financial analysts, who serve as information specialists, are subject to limited attention. JEL Classifications: G10; G11; G17; G14. Data Availability: Data are publicly available from the sources identified in the paper.

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This article summarizes Knechel, Thomas, and Driskill (2020), conceptualizing financial auditing as an economic service. In contrast to the production of tangible goods, a central characteristic of economic services is substantial customer/client participation in the production process. Financial auditing is an intensive collaborative network service due to the multiple parties involved in the production and consumption of the resulting output. This introduces significant heterogeneity and complexity into the planning and conduct of the audit, the resulting audit output, and perceptions of audit quality. While the independence of the auditor is necessary, ignoring the essential nature of auditor-client cooperation may generate unexpected costs which impair audit quality. The multitude of parties involved in an audit creates tension between audit quality and audit efficiency and makes objective definitions of audit quality difficult. Excessive standardization of the audit process may not increase audit quality.

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