Following the Global Settlement, analysts extensively use a top pick designation to highlight their highest conviction best ideas. Such a designation enables analysts to provide greater granularity of information, but it can potentially be influenced by conflicts of interest. Examining a...

Using a novel database, we show that the stock-price impact of analyst trade ideas is at least as large as the impact of stock recommendation, target price, and earnings forecast changes, and that investors following trade ideas can earn significant abnormal returns. Trade ideas triggered by...

Because uncertainty is high in bad times, investors find it harder to assess firm prospects and, hence, should value analyst output more. However, higher uncertainty makes analysts' tasks harder so it is unclear if analyst output is more valuable in bad times. We find that, in bad times, analyst...

Typically, the literature evaluates the significance of analyst recommendation changes by their average stock-price impact. With such an approach, recommendation changes can have a significant impact even if no recommendation change has a stock-price impact large enough to be noticed at the...

This paper investigates the long-term performance of Japanese firms issuing convertible debt or equity. We find that these firms perform poorly even though the stock-price reaction to convertible debt and equity issue announcements is not significantly negative for Japanese firms and Japanese...

Equity market liberalizations are like IPOs, but they are IPOs of a country's stock market rather than of individual firms. Both are endogenous events whose benefits are limited by poor investor protection, agency costs, and information asymmetries. As for stock prices following an IPO, there...