This paper assesses the monitoring power of security analysts from the manager-shareholder conflict perspective. Using a sample of UK firms tracked by security analysts, our evidence supports the view that security analysis acts as a monitoring mechanism in reducing agency costs. We also find...

"In this paper we conduct an out-of-sample test of two behavioural theories that have been proposed to explain momentum in stock returns. We test the gradual-information-diffusion model of Hong and Stein (1999) and the investor conservatism bias model of Barberis et al. (1998) in a sample of...

Several empirical studies show that investment strategies that favor the purchase of stocks with low prices relative to conventional measures of value yield higher returns. Some of these studies imply that investors are too optimistic about (glamour) stocks that have had good performance in the...

In this paper we examine the relation between equity mispricing and arbitrage risk and find that stocks with high arbitrage risk have higher estimated mispricing than stocks with low arbitrage risk. These results are not limited to high book-to-market or small capitalization stocks, and they are...

We find that positive excess (strong) analyst coverage is associated with overvaluation and low future returns. This finding is consistent with the view that excessive analyst coverage, driven by investment banking incentives and analyst self-interests, raises investor optimism causing share...

In this paper, we examine the relation between stock returns and analysts' heterogeneous expectations. We find that stock returns are positively associated with divergence of opinion. Our evidence provides no support for Miller's (1977) overvaluation hypothesis, which predicts lower (higher)...

"We examine whether abnormal analyst coverage influences the external financing and investment decisions of the firm. Controlling for self-selection bias in analysts' excessive coverage, we find that firms with high (low) analyst coverage consistently engage in higher (lower) external financing...