The vast majority of reports written by sell-side equity analysts conclude with a reiteration of the analyst's existing recommendation on a firm's stock. Yet there is a disproportionate amount of research that focuses on the market reactions of changes in recommendations and a prevailing sense...

We examine a specific form of what we term analyst contrarianism. We define contrarianism as cases where an analyst expresses a summary opinion contrary to the direction of a given earnings surprise or revision. Distinct from analyst optimism or boldness, we document that analysts interpret...

The literature examining analyst activity assumes that access to management is valued by analysts and their employers. We propose a readily observable measure of access: how often an analyst is invited to be among the first to ask questions in the Q&A session of an earnings conference call....

The most prevalent forecasts of firms' long-term earnings issued by analysts are two-year-ahead earnings per share (EPS) estimates. When introduced by analysts, two-year-ahead EPS estimates set market expectations for firms' future earnings. Subsequent revisions to these estimates are highly...

This study examines reactions of financial analysts to the disclosure of corporate fraud. We posit that analysts downgrade earnings forecasts of fraud firms after fraud disclosure to signal their quality and integrity. We explore how internal and external contingencies shape analysts'...

This study provides novel evidence that expert economic agents' work-related activities are systematically influenced by the time-of-day. We use archival data derived from time-stamped quarterly earnings conference calls together with linguistic algorithms to measure and track the moods of...