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...

I utilize the recursive partitioning method to extract analysts' weight of forecasts assigned in their stock recommendation decisions. My findings suggest that in addition to analysts' earnings forecasts, the non-earnings forecasts, such as sales forecasts and net income forecasts, also play an...

This study investigates the association between institutional investors’ ownership and sell-side analysts’ stock recommendations in the context of the heterogeneous nature of institutional investors. Based on a sample of 281 Malaysian public listed companies over the period 2008-2013 (732...

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...

Prior studies have shown that investment banking affiliations place pressure on analysts to produce optimistic recommendations on the investment bank's stock-clients. Our analysis of a large sample of recommendations issued from 1995 through 2003 indicates that a mutual fund affiliation also...

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...

We argue that financial analysts can be viewed as participants of two tournaments (the “All-star” tournament and the intrafirm tournament) and examine whether analysts are incentivized by the tournament compensation structure. Using data from 1991 to 2007, we find that interim losers are...

We compare the timeliness of the information signals produced by investor-paid credit rating agencies (Egan and Jones), issuer-paid credit rating agencies (Standard and Poor's), and by sell-side equity analysts, and study the predictive power of this information for the bond and equity markets...

Top sportsmen often refer to competition against other top sportsmen as a motivation to exert more effort. We examine whether a similar pattern exists among another group of top professionals – star analysts. Our evidence suggests that star analysts concentrate their efforts and generate...

The majority of security analysts are identified as skilled when the cross-section of analyst performance is modeled as a mixture of multiple skill distributions. Analysts exhibit heterogeneous skill–some are high-type, and some are low-type. On average, the recommendationrevisions of both...