We develop a rational expectations model in which an issuer purchases credit ratings sequentially, deciding which to disclose to investors. Opacity about contacts between the issuer and rating agencies induces potential asymmetric information about which ratings the issuer obtained. While the...

Despite broad interest in analysts' activities, our understanding of sell-side analysts as a collective group is limited. This paper examines changes in the scope of the sell-side analyst industry and whether these changes impact information dissemination. Changes in the number of analysts...

We present evidence of first impression bias among finance professionals in the field. Equity analysts' forecasts, target prices, and recommendations suffer from first impression bias. If a firm performs particularly well (poorly) in the year before an analyst follows it, that analyst tends to...

This paper shows that equity analysts exhibit in-group favoritism and have less-favorable views about firms headed by out-of-group CEOs. Using gender to identify group, we find that, compared with female analysts, male analysts have lower earnings forecasts and worse stock recommendations for...

In this paper, we examine whether sell-side financial analysts show a bias when translating their soft information into a hard format. Sell-side analysts produce both soft research output, in the form of a textual report, and hard research output, including earnings forecasts, target prices, and...

In this research I empirically study the effects of information acquisition by investors or traders on analysts' forecast bias. Based on the theoretical literature on sell-side analysts, I argue that forecast bias is correlated to investors' information gathering, in two opposite directions. On...

We study how institutional investors utilize potentially biased information by analyzing the effect of IPO underwriters' earnings forecasts on investors' bidding behaviors in Chinese IPO auctions. Despite the presence of upward biases in underwriters' earnings forecasts, we nd that investors'...

Thousands of reports are published yearly by brokerage houses and investment banks, providing trading advice to investors and forecasts about the future market price of stocks (so-called target prices). Using a database of reports about blue chips listed on the Italian stock market, we measured...

Based on a unique dataset that identifies the locations of 19,832 financial analysts covering 21,885 firms from 49 countries during 1996-2013, we find that individualism of analysts' country of residence is negatively associated with their earnings forecast optimism and positively associated...

Thousands of reports are published yearly by brokerage houses and investment banks, providing trading advice to investors and forecasts concerning the future market price of stocks (the so called target prices). Using a database of reports concerning blue chips listed on the Italian stock...