An analyst who owns stock in the company she covers may be tempted to protect or enhance her personal interests. I examine how this conflict of interest affects the reporting of sell-side analysts. I identify and collect two samples, the first from SEC Form 144 filings, and the second from...

This study examines whether differential interpretation of earnings announcements is affected by earnings and firm characteristics. We find that Kandel and Pearson's (1995) forecast measures of differential interpretation are: 1) negatively related to earnings predictability, firm size, and...

Financial reporting around the time of IPOs is consistent with listed firms reporting more conservatively than previously as private firms, consistent with the results in Ball and Shivakumar (2005). We hypothesize that IPO firms supply the higher quality financial reports demanded by public...

Both bond rating agencies and equity analysts evaluate public companies and report their findings and opinions to market participants. Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) changed the dynamics of the market and placed restrictions on the information that companies could disclose to analysts. Debt...

We examine whether unaffiliated financial analysts' Buy recommendations after IPOs earn higher returns than those of affiliated analysts during the 1994-2001 time period, when analysts working at investment banks are alleged to have been influenced by conflicts of interest. We extend the work of...

The primary question addressed in this study is whether firm-specific ERCs - i.e., slope coefficients obtained from time-series regressions of abnormal returns on earnings surprises - are helpful in predicting price responses to future earnings surprises. Fundamental analysis involves both...

We examine the performance of buy-side analysts relative to that of the sell-side. Our tests show that buy-side analysts at a large investment firm make less optimistic stock recommendations than sell-side analysts, consistent with their facing fewer conflicts of interest. However, their...

Existing literature assumes that the order and timing of analysts' earnings forecasts are determined exogenously. However, analysts choose when to issue their forecasts. This study develops a model that endogenizes the timing decision of analysts and analyzes their equilibrium timing strategies....

We examine the role of financial analysts in forming institutional investors' investment decisions. We model how a fund manager invests in a stock based on reports produced by a biased sell-side analyst and an unbiased buy-side analyst. She weighs the two reports in her decision making, and puts...

We examine the relation between analyst forecast characteristics and the cost of debt financing. Consistent with the view that the information contained in analysts' forecasts is economically significant across asset classes, we find that analyst activity reduces bond yield spreads. We also find...