This study examines whether analysts' decisions to issue cash flows forecasts depend endogenously on their decision to use these forecasts to set target prices. An endogenous switching regression model, with analyst report regimes of disclosure and non-disclosure of cash flow forecasts, shows...

We assess investment banks' influence over the agreement between their analysts' research behavior and their clients' interests, in the post-reform era. Competing banks discipline their analysts with worse career outcomes for producing biased reports, issuing shirking reports, and for...

We propose an ex ante measure of analysts' production of private information (PPI) based on the correlations between analysts' forecast revisions and prior stock price changes. We validate this measure by examining whether analysts with lower correlations (higher PPI) provide more information...

We document that analysts cater to short-term investors by issuing optimistic target prices. Catering dominates among analysts at brokers without an investment banking arm as they face lower reputational cost. The market does not see through the analyst catering activity and their forecasts lead...

We examine how analysts' changing incentives driven by changes in market uncertainty affect analyst output, under a simple utility-maximizing framework. Analysts issue more optimistically biased forecasts and buy recommendations under high market uncertainty (VIX). The lower reputational costs...

This study compares the performance of sell-side equity analysts with and without a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. Using a large sample of forecasts, our tests indicate that CFA charterholders issue forecasts that are timelier than those of non-charterholders. The results for...

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the choice of cut-off points, sampling procedures, and the business cycle on the accuracy of bankruptcy prediction models. Misclassification can result in erroneous predictions leading to prohibitive costs to firms, investors and the economy....

We examine the role of January in the relation between expected losses/profits and future stock returns. We predict and find that the relation between expected losses/profits and future returns reverses from the usual positive relation in non-January months to a negative one in January. The...

This paper reveals that in addition to fundamental factors, the 52-week high price and recent investor sentiment play an important role in analysts' target price formation. Analysts' forecasts of short-term earnings and long-term earnings growth are shown to be important explanatory variables...

This paper examines the idiosyncratic information-content of corporate conference calls. It studies the determinants, and the consequences, of idiosyncratic information production. To facilitate this study, I develop a novel measure of information-content which analyzes every (idiosyncratic)...