Every analyst will experience stock recommendation failures during their career. Unlike many other professions, these pivotal moments occur in the full glare of clients, colleagues, equity‐sales teams, and the media. This research explores the practices of analysts up to and beyond the point where, faced with a failing recommendation, they contemplate “throwing in the towel” on their recommendation. Based on empirical evidence gathered from interviews with sell‐side analysts and their key interlocutors—equity‐sales specialists, investors, and investor relations officers—this paper uncovers several new empirical insights into the recommendation practices of analysts. The main argument made in the paper is that capitulation practices emerge from the specific contextual framework of individual recommendations and the analyst's conduct as a knowledgeable, emotional human agent. We identify several contextual contingencies of stock recommendations that underpin how a capitulation episode unfolds, including the temporal proximity of the capitulation to the original recommendation; the importance and profile of the stock to the analyst's reputation (“franchise intensity”); the level of interest/reaction from clients, equity‐sales teams and corporates; the nature/cause of recommendation failure; and recommendation boldness. Our study provides evidence that what an analyst does when faced with a failing recommendation cannot be reduced to a predictable, rational process and informs our understanding of observed practices such as the reluctance of analysts to capitulate and why “recommendation paralysis” often follows a recommendation capitulation.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, there are active debates about whether increases in energy access should be driven by investments in electric grid infrastructure or small-scale “home solar” systems (e.g., solar lanterns and solar home systems). We summarize the results of a household electrical appliance survey and describe how households in rural Kenya differ in terms of appliance ownership and aspirations. Our data suggest that home solar is not a substitute for grid power. Furthermore, the environmental advantages of home solar are likely to be relatively small in countries like Kenya, where grid power is primarily derived from non-fossil fuel sources.

We present results from an experiment that randomized the expansion of electric grid infrastructure in rural Kenya. Electricity distribution is a canonical example of a natural monopoly. Experimental variation in the number of connections, combined with administrative cost data, reveals considerable scale economies, as hypothesized. Randomized price offers indicate that demand for connections falls sharply with price. Among newly connected households, average electricity consumption is very low, implying low consumer surplus. We do not find meaningful medium-run impacts on economic and noneconomic outcomes. We discuss implications for current efforts to increase rural electrification in Kenya and highlight how various factors may affect interpretation.