Decision fatigue and heuristic analyst forecasts
Hirshleifer, Levi, Lourie and Teoh test whether decision fatigue affects financial analysts, who cover many firms and often issue several forecasts in a day. Their abstract reports that forecast accuracy falls as the number of forecasts already issued that day rises, that analysts who have issued more are more likely to herd with the consensus, repeat their own earlier forecasts and issue rounded forecasts, and that the stock market appears to discount forecasts to allow for decision fatigue.
Hirshleifer, Levi, Lourie and Teoh test whether decision fatigue affects financial analysts, who cover many firms and often issue several forecasts in a day. Their abstract reports that forecast accuracy falls as the number of forecasts already issued that day rises, that analysts who have issued more are more likely to herd with the consensus, repeat their own earlier forecasts and issue rounded forecasts, and that the stock market appears to discount forecasts to allow for decision fatigue.
Written from the abstract, NBER working paper 24293 and journal record, 2026-10-29.
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Hirshleifer, D., Levi, Y., Lourie, B., & Teoh, S. H. (2019). Decision fatigue and heuristic analyst forecasts. Journal of Financial Economics, 133(1), 83-98. doi:10.1016/j.jfineco.2019.01.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2019.01.005