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Journal of Accounting and Economics Vol. 74 No. 1 2022

Cross-industry information sharing among colleagues and analyst research

ALLEN HUANG1; An-Ping Lin2; Amy Zang1

1 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · 2 Singapore Management University

open access

Abstract

We identify a specific organizational resource in brokerage houses—information sharing among analyst colleagues who cover economically related industries along a supply chain. After controlling for brokerage selection effects, we show evidence consistent with the benefit of this resource to analyst research performance. Specifically, we find that analysts whose colleagues cover more economically connected industries have better research performance, especially when their colleagues produce higher-quality research. We further show that colleagues' coverage of downstream (upstream) industries is positively related to the accuracy of only analysts’ revenue (expense) forecasts and that analysts and their highly connected colleagues tend to issue earnings forecast revisions contemporaneously. Last, we find that analysts with economically connected colleagues tend to have a higher level of industry specialization. Overall, our findings suggest that analysts rely on organizational resources to produce high-quality research. Hence, a portion of their performance and reputation is not transferable across employers.

DOI
10.1016/j.jacceco.2022.101496
Volume
74
Issue
1
Pages
101496
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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