Abstract: This paper studies the behaviour of earnings forecasts of affiliated analysts,whose brokers are pledgees of listed firms and related to share pledge firms.Using the data from 2013 to 2017,we find that the earnings forecasts issued by affiliated analysts are less accurate as they tend to issue biased research reports on share pledge firms,and the finding supports the hypothesis of interest conflicts.Moreover,the interest conflicts behaviour of affiliated analysts is more significant in the sample with high equity pledge ratio and poor risk management ability of securities companies.The impact of share pledge on interest conflict of affiliated analysts starts from affiliated analysts' need to acquire private information from share pledge firms and help their securities companies thus resulting in the double interest conflicts that affiliated analysts face with share pledge firms and affiliated securities companies respectively.Overall,this study contributes to the researches on the economic consequences of share pledge,and helps us better understand the earnings forecast behaviour under the interest conflict from the perspective of share pledge.

Key words: affiliated analysts, analysts' earnings forecasts, share pledge, interest conflicts, information superiority