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...

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...

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...

Using a sample of 42,376 board directors and 10,508 security analysts we construct a social network, mapping the connections between analysts and directors, between directors, and between analysts. We use social capital theory and techniques developed in social network analysis to measure the...

We find that analyst coverage and optimism for an IPO before it starts trading have positive impacts on both its offer price revision and first-day return. Pre-IPO analyst research is also positively associated with long-run returns. Analysts with connections to the underwriter are more likely...

We examine the role that political-economic factors play in shaping financial analyst bias using a series of scheduled provincial elections in China. Theory on political business cycles holds that, in a short period prior to these political events, provincial politicians have stronger incentives...

Prior research calls into question the general informational role of analysts by documenting inefficiencies, biases, and limitations of sell-side analyst research (e.g., forecasts). Rather than examine the general informational value of analyst research, I examine the value of analyst research...

We examine the effect of MiFID II, which mandated the unbundling and separate pricing of analyst research in Europe beginning in 2018. We find that the requirements of MiFID II were associated with a reduction in analyst following for European firms relative to US firms, with decreases in...

I investigate how the use of extended tags in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) filings is associated with financial analysts' forecast error and dispersion. The SEC allows firms to provide customize tags in their XBRL filings which, on the one hand, may allow firms to customize...

We use a proprietary dataset to test the implications of several asymmetric information models on how short-lived private information affects trading strategies and liquidity provision. Our identification rests on information acquisition before analyst recommendations are publically announced....