We investigate the effect of credit analyst rotation in the context of long-term ratings of S&P 500 issuers between 2002 and 2015. We find that analyst rotation in the coverage of issuers is associated with higher rating activity and a lower credit risk assessment (e.g., rating downgrades)...

We conduct a detailed analysis of investors in successful initial coin offerings (ICOs). The average ICO has 4,700 contributors. The median participant contributes small amounts and many investors sell their tokens before the underlying product is developed. Large presale investors obtain tokens...

We find that investors are fixated on analysts' consensus outputs (earnings forecasts, recommendations, and forecast dispersion), which can be inferior signals compared to the corresponding outputs provided by high-quality analysts, especially when a large number of high-quality analysts follow...

We find that male participants in Harvard Business School's New Venture Competition who were randomly exposed to more VC investors on their panel were substantially more likely to start a VC-backed startup post-graduation, indicating that access to investors impacts fundraising independent of...

Using a novel database, we show that the stock-price impact of analyst trade ideas is at least as large as the impact of stock recommendation, target price, and earnings forecast changes, and that investors following trade ideas can earn significant abnormal returns. Trade ideas triggered by...

We study price dispersion and venue choice in the interdealer market for German sovereign bonds, where an exchange and over-the-counter segments coexist. We show that 85% of OTC traded prices are favorable with respect to exchange quotes, indicating the prevalence of an OTC discount. This...

Focusing on downgrades as stress events that drive the selling of corporate bonds, we document that the illiquidity of stressed bonds has increased after the Volcker Rule. Dealers regulated by the Rule have decreased their market-making activities while non-Volcker-affected dealers have stepped...

This paper studies how institutional characteristics of Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are related to their post-merger survival. SPACs are unique financial firms that conduct the IPO with the solely purpose to use the proceeds to acquire another private company. Paper finds...

Dealers in the over-the-counter municipal bond market form trading networks with other dealers to mitigate search frictions. Regulatory audit trail data show the dealer network has a core-periphery structure with 10 to 30 hubs and over 2,000 peripheral broker-dealers in which bonds flow in a...

Using the introduction of high-speed rail as exogenous shocks to costs of information acquisition, we show that reductions in information-acquisition costs lead to a significant increase in information production and improvement in output quality, evidenced by higher frequency of analysts...