The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of analysts on the slack in management earnings forecasts (hereafter MEFs) and earnings management to achieve the targets. First, analyzing the relationship between the number of analysts at the beginning of year t+1 and target revisions to year t+1 by using target ratcheting model, we confirm that as the number of analysts increases, the MEFs issued at the beginning of year t+1 get higher than that of year t.Second, to verify the relationship between the number of analysts and the slack in MEFs, we analyze the relationship between the number of analysts at the beginning of year t+1 and the likelihood of achieving the MEFs issued at the beginning of year t+1. In our test, we find that the likelihood of achieving the MEFs tends to decrease as the number of analysts increases, which suggests that the slack may eventually disappear as analyst monitoring strengthens. Finally, we confirm that there is a positive correlation between the number of analysts at the beginning of year t+1 and real earnings manipulation in year t+1. Our evidence indicates that the presence of analysts may cause managers to issue higher level of MEFs and eliminate slack, but this higher level of MEFs leads to real earnings manipulation for managers.