“…First, prior research indicates that analysts herd and suggests that forecasts that are inconsistent with those of the analyst's peers are costly (Trueman, 1994;Hong et al, 2000;Clement and Tse, 2005;Jegadeesh and Kim, 2010). Second, Dong et al (2015) and Lobo et al (2017) examine analyst consistency relative to other information (stock returns and earnings announcements, respectively) and find evidence that inconsistent forecasts are less accurate and less informative to the market, supporting the concept that inconsistent forecasts are costly. A third body of literature focuses on an analyst's consistency with his/her own other outputs (Trueman, 1994;Raedy et al, 2006;Brown and Huang, 2013;Hilary and Hsu, 2013) and finds inconsistent forecasts to be costly in terms of accuracy, reputation and career concerns.…”