Sell-side analysts employ different benchmarks when defining their recommendations. A buy for some brokers means the stock is expected to outperform its industry, while for other brokers it means the stock is expected to outperform the market, or some return threshold. We show that these stated...

We study the effect of the Global Analyst Research Settlement and related regulations on sell-side research. These regulations attempted to mitigate the interdependence between research and investment banking. We document that following the regulations many brokerage houses have migrated from...

This paper studies the effect of regulations on sell-side analysts' research. These regulations - NASD Rule 2711, NYSE Rule 472, and the Global Analyst Research Settlement - attempted to mitigate the interdependence between research and investment bank departments of U.S. brokerage houses. We...

We offer a parsimonious index at the individual analyst level to measure the extent to which an analyst relies on earnings and long-term growth forecasts in her advice. Using this index, we evaluate the contribution of earnings and growth forecasts to the investment value of analysts’ stock...

Capital expenditures of U.S. public firms, relative to total assets, decrease by more than a half from 1980 to 2012. The decline is pervasive across industries and firms of different characteristics. The decline is not explained by time variation in industry composition in the economy, firms'...

We integrate an agency problem into search theory to study executive compensation in a market equilibrium. A CEO can choose to stay or quit and search after privately observing an idiosyncratic shock to the firm. The market equilibrium endogenizes CEOs' and firms' outside options and captures...

Historically, economic activities have been organized around certain ideologies. We investigate the impact of politicians' ideology on corporate policies by exploring a unique setting of ideological change—China from Mao to Deng around the 1978 economic reform—in a regression discontinuity...

Economic activities have always been organized around certain ideologies, yet little is known about how ideology shapes corporate behavior and how it is different from other political forces. We investigate the impact of politicians' ideology on corporate policies by exploring a unique setting...

Because analysts strategically allocate more effort to portfolio firms that are relatively more important for their careers, a firm's information environment is impacted by other firms covered by its analysts. Controlling for analyst and firm characteristics, an analyst makes more accurate,...

We integrate an agency problem into search theory to study executive compensation in a market equilibrium. A CEO can choose to stay or quit and search after privately observing an idiosyncratic shock to the firm. The market equilibrium endogenizes CEOs' and firms' outside options and captures...