We examine the influence of institutional factors on herding behavior by exploring changes in security analysts’ institutional environments. Specifically, we identify analysts employed at privately held brokers subsequently acquired by a publicly listed institution (hereafter, “treated...

Using machine learning-based algorithms, we measure key impressions about sell-side analysts using their LinkedIn profile photos. We find that analysts’ trustworthiness (TRUST) and dominance (DOM) are positively associated with forecast accuracy, especially after recent in-person meetings...

We document a strong positive initial market reaction to merger announcements from bidders with either large earnings growth or significant earnings decline, relative to those with neutral earnings change, reflecting a U-shaped pattern between bidders’ earnings growth and announcement returns....

We examine the impact of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) on financial analysts. We hypothesize and find that analysts are more pessimistic, less precise, and more asymmetric in their boldness in the fall, as indicated by their forecasts of quarterly earnings. The effects are apparent in all...

We present evidence of first impression bias among finance professionals in the field. Equity analysts' forecasts, target prices, and recommendations suffer from first impression bias. If a firm performs particularly well (poorly) in the year before an analyst follows it, that analyst tends to...

Using proprietary data from a major fund data provider, we analyze the screening activity of investment consultants (ICs) who advise institutional investors with trillions of dollars in assets. We find that ICs frequently shortlist funds using threshold screens clustered at round, base 5 or base...

We construct a measure of analyst-level distraction based on analysts' exposure to exogenous attention-grabbing events affecting firms under coverage. We find that temporarily distracted analysts achieve lower forecast accuracy, revise forecasts less frequently, and publish less informative...

This study presents direct evidence on the question whether investors recognize the widely documented biases in securities analysts' earnings forecasts. The internal rate of return implied by current stock price and consensus earnings forecasts is found to be correlated with indicators of bias...

During quarters when analysts are working on IPOs, the accuracy, quantity, and timeliness of their research declines for the non-IPO firms that they cover at the same time. Consistent with increased workload reducing analyst information production, analyst forecasts during these periods deviate...

We study earnings per share (EPS) forecast revision and accuracy of banking analysts around operational risk event announcements in U.S. banks. We find that first announcements of operational risk events are more informative than their settlement announcements. Optimistic banking analysts revise...