We examine whether the informativeness of sell-side analyst reports depends on the strength of the regulatory environment of a country and the regulatory background of the institutional investors of a company. Our analyses are based on more than 600,000 analyst reports from 2005 through 2010...

In this paper, we study whether firm intangible information affects analyst behavior. We find direct evidence that when analysts make more judgment-intensive decisions, such as issuing stock recommendations, they overweight intangible information, leading to overreaction to intangible...

This paper examines whether star-analysts have better forecasting abilities than non-star-analysts. Our results reveal that star-analysts' earnings forecasts outperform their peers' forecasts. Because the level of corporate governance plays an important role for the general level of forecast...

The expectations management literature has so far focused on firms meeting the analyst consensus forecast — the expectations of analysts as a group — at earnings announcements. In this study we argue that investors may use individual analyst forecasts as additional benchmarks in evaluating...

This study examines the relationship between the value of financial analysts' recommendations and the intensity of firms' research and development (R&D) expenditures. We conduct univariate, portfolio and regression analyses using a sample of 8,620 public firms for the period 1993-2004. The...

Using a comprehensive sample of investment recommendations, we investigate differences in the performance, behavior, and career outcomes of male and female sell-side analysts. Compared to their male counterparts, we find that the recommendations of female analysts produce similar abnormal...

Using hand-collected data on analyst locations, we study how geographic proximity affects analyst coverage decisions for U.S. firms that went public during 1996-2009, along with the impact of local coverage on firm visibility. Analysts are 80% more likely to cover local firms than non-local...

This paper examines whether conflicted analyst research affects the firms under coverage. We develop a novel approach to identify a sample of firms whose coverage is mostly driven by analysts' private incentives to generate investment banking revenue. We find that conflicted analyst coverage is...

We document that a stock's price around a recommendation or forecast covaries with prices of other stocks the issuing analyst covers. The effect of shared analyst coverage on stock price comovement extends beyond analyst activity days. A stock's daily returns covary with the returns of other...

The World's best equity analysts are based in Asia – these analysts are better at forecasting stock prices than their peers in the US, Europe and the UK. In comparison with the other regions, the performance of buy recommendations made by Asia analysts is superior and consistent over time. The...