This article develops and implements a new test to investigate whether sell-side analysts herd around the consensus when they make stock recommendations. Our empirical results support the herding hypothesis. Stock price reactions following recommendation revisions are stronger when the new...

Crowdsourced financial information platforms often allow content contributors to publish equity research anonymously. This study examines whether investors value or discount information in anonymous equity research. In the short window around research releases, we find that investors’ stock...

I examine the demand for public information by local and nonlocal investors. Using novel data on institutional investors’ requests for financial information from the SEC, I document that investors acquire approximately 20% more financial information for their local investments. This pattern...

We develop a model of voluntary disclosure in the presence of diversely-informed investors. The manager's disclosure strategy influences trading by investors, which in turn affects the manager's incentives to disclose. We document conditions under which there exists a unique equilibrium where...

Using machine learning methods, we develop a new measure of aggregate analyst sentiment. We first train analyst-specific neural network (NN) models that capture each analyst's common biases across firms. Using NN model outputs, we decompose the forecast errors of individual analysts into...

We study how language affects private debt renegotiation. We predict that stronger future time reference (FTR) languages alter the importance of renegotiation risk by lowering the perceived value of loan renegotiation. We test this hypothesis on a sample of 6.500 loans issued to European firms...

We provide new evidence on the effects of social media in the context of a financial scandal using a sample of banks that were accused of manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate. We find that increased banks' Twitter activity when the scandal surfaced has a positive moderating effect on...

Firm managers likely have more information than outsiders. If managers strategically conceal information, market uncertainty will increase. We develop a dynamic corporate disclosure model, estimating the model using the management earnings forecasts of US public companies. The model, based on...

There is a long-standing debate on whether sell-side analysts learn from their experience to improve earnings forecast skills. This study shows that incentive is an important factor for understanding the "learning by doing" effect by analysts. We examine analysts' response to a complex type of...

This paper measures how both geographical and cultural proximity of bank branches affect household credit choice and pricing. We examine both types of proximity jointly to separately identify the importance of soft information versus alternative mechanisms. Using a detailed household-level...