We study sell-side analysts' motives to diversify their portfolios across industries. Despite the negative association between diversification and accuracy, over 60% of analysts cover multiple industries. We argue that analysts' choice to diversify is rooted in concerns about future job...

Using a sample that post-dates important regulatory changes in Europe, we show that a buy recommendation from an analyst on a “consensus sell” stock is, on average, sufficient to cause the stock to start to rise in value. Similarly, a sell recommendation on a “consensus buy” stock can...

Using a matched sample of separately managed accounts (SMAs) and mutual funds (MFs) with the same portfolio manager and investment style, we find that concurrently managed MFs consistently underperform their SMAs counterparts and generate more negative return gaps. Fund characteristics and...

This research note summarizes intriguing evidence on the impact of an asset manager's overall investment operations on individual portfolio performance. Our exploratory analysis of operational data associated with 61 institutional portfolios across 14 managers (over the period October 1999 to...

We investigate the association between corporate international diversification and the accuracy and bias of consensus analysts' earnings forecasts. We find that greater corporate international diversification is associated with less accurate and more optimistic forecasts. Our results suggest...

Active management plays a critical, positive role in the efficiency of capital markets. In the first study of its kind to use data on institutionally-focused products, we find that, while a large percentage of active equity managers earn enough alpha on average to cover their costs, less than 2%...

Although mutual fund performance has been dissected from almost every angle, very little attention has been paid to the connection between the actual active decisions made by management and the subsequent performance outcomes. In this paper we use information on institutional mutual funds to...

This paper investigates the risk versus mispricing explanation of superior returns to contrarian strategies using the interactions between value-to-market indicators and corporate financing transactions that increase or decrease a firm's outstanding equity. Portfolio-level analyses and...

We study whether analysts' recommendations and the market's reactions to recommendation changes are influenced by the structure of analysts' research portfolios. We find that analysts maintain more positive recommendations for stocks that belong to the “core industry” in their research...

I study the relation between venture capitalists' (VCs) presence and real activities manipulation (RM). I find that compared to non-venture-backed companies, venture-backed companies show significantly less RM in the first post-IPO fiscal year. The results are robust after controlling for the VC...