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Optimism bias in financial analysts' earnings forecasts: Do commissions sharing agreements reduce conflicts of interest?

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  • Galanti, Sébastien
  • Vaubourg, Anne Gaël

Abstract

Implemented in May 2007, the French rules governing commission-sharing agreements (CSAs) consist of unbundling brokerage and investment research fees. The goal of this paper is to analyze the effect of these rules on analysts' forecasts. Based on a sample of one-year-ahead earnings per share forecasts for 58 French firms during the period from 1999 to 2011, we conduct panel data regressions. We show that the analysts' optimistic bias declined significantly after CSA rules, which suggests that these rules are effective at curbing the conflicts of interest between brokerage activities and financial research. Our results are robust to the impact of the Global Settlement and the Market Abuse Directive.

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  • Galanti, Sébastien & Vaubourg, Anne Gaël, 2017. "Optimism bias in financial analysts' earnings forecasts: Do commissions sharing agreements reduce conflicts of interest?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 325-337.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:67:y:2017:i:c:p:325-337
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2017.02.001
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    Cited by:

    1. Quentin Bro de Comères, 2022. "Predicting European Banks Distress Events: Do Financial Information Producers Matter?," Working Papers hal-03752678, HAL.
    2. Sébastien Galanti & Anne-Gaël Vaubourg, 2020. "Unbundling financial services: The case of brokerage and investment research," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(1), pages 473-484.
    3. Eugster, Nicolas & Isakov, Dušan, 2019. "Founding family ownership, stock market returns, and agency problems," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 1-1.
    4. He, Feng & Ma, Yaming, 2019. "Do political connections decrease the accuracy of stock analysts' recommendations in the Chinese stock market?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 59-72.
    5. Hou, Tony Chieh-Tse & Gao, Simon, 2021. "The impact of economic freedom on financial analysts' earnings forecast: Evidence from the Asia-Pacific region," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial analysts; EPS forecasts; Optimism; Conflicts of interest; Commission sharing agreements;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

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