Several prior studies indicate that financial analysts exhibit systematic underreaction to information; others illustrate systematic overreaction. We assume that cognitive biases influence analysts' behavior and that these misreactions are not systematic, but they depend on the nature of news....

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...