Major government customer and management earnings forecasts

Frontiers of Business Research in China

Table 1 Descriptive statistics

	Corporate supplier MEFs			Government supplier MEFs			Two-sample difference test statistic
	Mean	Median	Std. dev.	Mean	Median	Std. dev.	T-test	Wilcoxon	F-test
No. of obs.	764			404
Precision	−0.003	− 0.002	0.004	− 0.002	− 0.001	0.002	−8.30***	− 6.70***	3.80***
Accuracy	0.017	0.013	0.019	0.012	0.011	0.013	5.09***	4.04***	2.26***
Impact	−0.013	−0.007	0.109	−0.008	0.001	0.105	−0.83	− 1.39	1.07
Surprise	−0.038	−0.013	0.097	−0.022	− 0.005	0.073	−3.19***	−2.51**	1.75***
ROA	−0.005	0.037	0.148	0.042	0.049	0.090	−6.66***	−5.47***	2.71***
BMR	0.563	0.494	0.344	0.462	0.400	0.303	5.15***	5.52***	1.29***
SIZE	6.859	6.828	1.477	6.872	6.616	1.635	−0.14	1.33	1.23**
RETVOL	0.033	0.030	0.014	0.030	0.027	0.013	3.48***	3.56***	1.23**
GROWTH	0.102	0.099	0.238	0.149	0.140	0.202	−3.54***	−3.94***	1.38***
LEV	0.208	0.165	0.208	0.212	0.168	0.200	− 0.35	− 1.01	1.08
AGE	2.542	2.552	0.654	2.383	2.273	0.992	2.90***	5.03***	2.30***