We study the impact of social networks on agents' ability to gather superior information about
firms. Exploiting novel data on the educational background of sell‐side analysts and senior …

This paper develops a taxonomy of research examining the role of financial analysts in
capital markets. The paper builds on the perspectives provided by Schipper [Schipper …

Using hand‐collected biographical information on financial analysts from 1983 to 2011, we
find that analysts making forecasts on firms in industries related to their preanalyst …

Because uncertainty is high in bad times, investors find it harder to assess firm prospects
and hence should value analyst output more. However, higher uncertainty makes analysts' …

Research optimism among securities analysts has been attributed to incentives provided by
underwriting activities. We examine how analysts' forecast and recommendation optimism …

Security analysts tend to bias stock recommendations upward, particularly if they are
affiliated with the underwriter. We analyze how investors account for such distortions. Using …

We use proprietary data from a major investment bank to investigate factors associated with
analysts' annual compensation. We find compensation to be positively related to “All‐Star” …

Because sell-side analysts are dependent on institutional investors for performance ratings
and trading commissions, we argue that analysts are less likely to succumb to investment …

A conflict of interest exists when a party to a transaction can gain by taking actions that are
detrimental to its counterparty. This paper examines the growing empirical literature on the …

We study the effect of the Global Analyst Research Settlement and related regulations on
sell-side research. These regulations attempted to mitigate the interdependence between …