Board characteristics and earnings forecasts accuracy in IPO prospectuses

Characteristics	Management board	Supervisory board(SB)
Age: Percentage of members who are:
40 years old or less	0.3741	0.4040
41–50 years old	0.3810	0.2706
51–60 years old	0.2177	0.2249
61 years old or more	0.0272	0.1005
Board size: Percentage of firms with board consisting of:
2 (SB: 5) people or less	0.4038	0.8269
3 (SB: 6) or 4 (SB: 7) people	0.5192	0.1538
5 (SB: 8) people or more	0.0769	0.0192
Female: Percentage of firms with number of women on board:
No women	0.7019	0.3654
1 women	0.2885	0.4231
2 women	0.0096	0.1442
3 and more	0.0000	0.0673
Ownership: Percentage of firms with board ownership:
Less than 5%	0.2788	0.3942
5%–33%	0.1538	0.1250
33%–75%	0.1923	0.1827
More than 75%	0.3750	0.2981

Specification	Mean	Standard deviation	Median	Min	Q1	Q3	Max
Dependent variables
FER	–0.1621	0.5952	–0.0164	–3.2360	–0.2910	0.0969	0.9510
AFER	0.3405	0.5135	0.1937	0.0011	0.0517	0.3904	3.2360
SUP	1.7636	3.7101	1.4153	–10.5907	–0.9369	4.0500	11.8018
Management board variables
BOARD_SIZE	2.8269	1.0376	3.0000	1.0000	2.0000	3.0000	6.0000
FEMALE	0.1079	0.1876	0.0000	0.0000	0.0000	0.2250	1.0000
AGE_DIV	0.3392	0.2431	0.4444	0.0000	0.0000	0.5000	0.7200
OWNERSHIP	0.4904	0.4123	0.5009	0.0000	0.0258	0.9462	1.1491
Supervisory board variables
BOARD_SIZE	5.2596	0.7758	5.0000	3.0000	5.0000	5.0000	10.0000
FEMALE	0.1784	0.1771	0.2000	0.0000	0.0000	0.2000	0.6667
AGE_DIV	0.5732	0.1251	0.5657	0.0000	0.4800	0.6400	0.8000
OWNERSHIP	0.3991	0.4073	0.2944	0.0000	0.0000	0.8675	1.1060
Control variables
HORIZON	204	109	199	26	112	286	487
C_SIZE	186037	474543	65688	519	22827	139454	3946553
AGE	20.5577	25.4825	14	2	8	19.2500	149

Variables	Measures	Predicted sign
Panel A: Dependent variables
FER	Earnings forecast error
AFER	Absolute earnings forecast error
SUP	Superiority of forecasting earnings
Panel B: Board characteristics variables
BOARD_SIZE	Size of the management board (MB) (supervisory board [SB]) board, which is the total	MB: –
	number of directors (supervisors) in the board of firm	SB: –
FEMALE	Ratio of the number of female directors (supervisors) to the total number of directors	MB: –
	(supervisors) in the board of firm	SB: –
AGE_DIV	Age diversity of MB (SB) measure based on the modification of the Herfindahl index (HHI)	MB: –
		SB: –
OWNERSHIP	Total number of shares held by all directors (supervisors) to the total number of pre-initial	MB: +
	public offering (IPO) outstanding shares	SB:
Panel C: Control variables
HORIZON^*	The horizon of an earnings forecast is measured as the number of days from the release of	–
	the prospectus to the end of the IPO year
C_SIZE^*	Size is measured by the total value of sales in the year prior to the IPO	+
AGE^*	The difference between the IPO date and the date of incorporation in years	+

Specification	BOARD_SIZE	FEMALE	AGE_DIV	OWNERSHIP	HORIZON	C_SIZE
Panel A: Pearson correlation coefficient for management board
BOARD_SIZE	1.0000
FEMALE	0.0145	1.0000
AGE_DIV	0.4083^***	0.2281^**	1.0000
OWNERSHIP	–0.0315	0.0659	–0.0726	1.0000
HORIZON	–0.0247	–0.0071	0.0247	–0.0153	1.0000
C_SIZE	0.3454^***	–0.3008^***	0.1292	–0.0821	–0.0563	1.0000
AGE	0.0125	–0.0176	0.1049	–0.1489	0.0363	0.3606^***
Panel B: Pearson correlation coefficient for supervisory board
BOARD_SIZE	1.0000
FEMALE	–0.1115	1.0000
AGE_DIV	0.1435	–0.0008	1.0000
OWNERSHIP	–0.1729	0.3364^***	–0.0185	1.0000
HORIZON	–0.0895	–0.0375	–0.0879	0.0146	1.0000
C_SIZE	0.3129^***	0.0360	0.3015^***	0.0197	–0.0563	1.0000
AGE	–0.0473	0.2175^**	0.1915^*	0.1731^*	0.0363	0.3606^***

Publication timeframe:: 4 times per year
Journal Subjects:: Business and Economics, Political Economics, Economic Theory, Systems and Structures, Business Management, Management Accounting, Financial Controlling, Cost Calculation, Investment