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Prof. Sterling Huang
Associate Professor of Accounting
School of Accountancy
Singapore Management University

We study the impact of mobile internet technology on analyst forecast performance. Mobile internet facilitates uninterrupted access to various types of information and provides productivity tools for professionals. As such, it can help financial analysts gain immediate access to information and integrate it into their forecasts, leading to improved forecast timeliness. Mobile internet may also allow analysts to gather or receive additional information more promptly, improving forecast accuracy. Our tests utilize the rollout of 3G mobile internet in the U.S. and include both continuous treatment and sharp-increase differences-in-differences models, comparing forecast characteristics for a given firm-year across analysts with varying degrees of access to mobile internet. Results indicate that enhanced access to mobile internet results in significant improvements in analysts’ forecast timeliness and accuracy. We link these improvements empirically to the rollout of productivity apps, and confirm their effect with a tool particularly pertinent for analysts, the Bloomberg app.