We examine whether conflicts of interest with investment banking and brokerage induce sell-side analysts to issue optimistic stock recommendations and, if so, whether investors are misled by such biases. Using quantitative measures of potential conflicts constructed from revenue breakdowns of...

We examine whether sell-side analyst recommendations reflect shareholder rights. Our rationale is that analysts should be influenced by external governance only if market participants do not efficiently price its value. We find that stronger shareholder rights are associated with more favorable...

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 infer motives for trade initiation from market sidedness. We define trading as more two-sided (one-sided) if the correlation between the numbers of buyer- and seller-initiated trades increases (decreases), and assess changes in sidedness (relative to a control sample) around events that...

We investigate how the interaction between product market competition and firm-level corporate governance enhances the accuracy of analysts' forecasts and reduces the forecasts' deviation. Using a sample of Brazilian public firms covered by analysts, we find that competitive industries provide...

The rise of Fintech in the past decade has received growing scholarly attention. This paper surveys Fintech-related articles published in leading finance, accounting, and management journals from 2010 to 2019. It aims to generate a taxonomy of Fintech and accumulate knowledge in the fields of...

Certification by online analysts and early investors can generate excitement among potential token investors, leading to successful initial coin offerings (ICOs). We test the general notion of "wisdom of crowds" using novel data on nearly 3,400 ICOs, including sequential investor subscriptions...

The existing literature argues that diversified firms may be undervalued due to the information asymmetry between a firm's management and the market. Splitting the firm's divisions into multiple business components is thought to facilitate the market valuation of each component more accurately....