Abstract: This article conducts an analysis of the impact of information quality of listed companies on the forecast accuracy of sell-side analysts based on the financial forecasting data of the sell-side analysts from 2004 to 2013. The empirical result indicates that the information quality of the financial reports of listed companies can significantly impact the forecast accuracy of the sell-side analysts. The worse the information quality, the lower the forecast accuracy will be. At present, the sell-side analysts in China are still incapable of recognizing the financial information changes in the listed companies in advance, to improve the information environment of the securities markets can improve the forecast accuracy of the analysts to some extent. This conclusion can provide new empirical evidences to interpret the tracking behavior of the sell-side analysts, provide meaningful implications for the improvement of the voluntary information disclosure mechanism of the listed companies, and provide theoretical references for the supervision departments to introduce some relevant policies for the development of analyst service industry.

Key words: information quality; sell-side analyst; forecast accuracy