Certifiers contribute to the sound functioning of markets by reducing asymmetric information. They, however, have been heavily criticized during the 2008-09 financial crisis. This paper investigates on which side of the market a monopolistic profit-maximizing certifier offers his service. If the...

Certifiers contribute to the sound functioning of markets by reducing a symmetric information. They, however, have been heavily criticized during the 2008-09 financial crisis. This paper investigates on which side of the market a monopolistic profit-maximizing certifier offers his service. If...

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) provide a clean opportunity and rich data to study the contribution of analysts to the functioning of capital markets. The assessments of freelancing ICO analysts vary in quality and exhibit biases due to the reciprocal interactions of analysts with ICO team...

Using the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) as an exogenous shock to costs of information acquisition, we show that reductions in information-acquisition costs lead to (i) a significant increase in information production, evidenced by a higher frequency of analysts visiting portfolio firms,...

Using the introduction of high-speed rail as exogenous shocks to costs of information acquisition, we show that reductions in information-acquisition costs lead to a significant increase in information production and improvement in output quality, evidenced by higher frequency of analysts...

This paper examines how the incumbent issuer-pay credit rating agencies (CRAs) in China adjust their rating strategies as a response to the entry of an independent rating agency, China Bond Rating (CBR), which utilizes a combination of public utility and investor-pay business model. We find that...

Motivated by models of rational inattention, we study the information choices of sell-side analysts who face attention constraints in acquiring and processing costly information. We empirically examine analysts' relative reliance on industry-level (i.e. macro) and firm-specific (i.e. micro)...

Using novel receivable-based-loan data, we study the effect of aging-report loan covenants on borrowers' accounts receivable reporting quality. Our purpose is to highlight a channel that lenders use to obtain private information and to understand whether lenders' information acquisition affects...

This study constructs a novel measure that aims to capture face-to-face private communications between firm managers and sell-side analysts by mapping detailed, large-volume taxi trip records from New York City to the GPS coordinates of companies and brokerages. Consistent with earnings releases...

Using a natural experiment of the staggered dissemination of trading information in the corporate bond market, we find that when public disclosure increases, private information production reduces. The reduction in information production is indicated by fewer bond analyst reports, fewer pages in...