Prior analyst literature focuses on the impact of financial analysts on the firms they cover, and prior information-transfer literature concentrates on the externalities of information provided by management. This paper fills gaps in both streams of literature by examining the focal firm's...

We examine differences in quarterly earnings announcement returns as a function of meeting or missing each of three earnings thresholds – reporting a profit, reporting an increase in earnings, and meeting analysts' forecasts. In contrast to prior research, the research design identifies the...

This is the first large-scale study to examine the peer companies used by sell-side equity analysts in their research reports. Using a unique hand-collected data set, we investigate the relation between peer valuation and peer choice by analysts. Controlling for numerous factors, we find that...

Using an extensive database of 356,463 sell-side equity analysts' reports from 2002 to 2009, this study is one of the first to analyze the readability of analysts' reports. We first examine the determinants of variations in analyst report readability. Using several proxies for ability, we show...