IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fmg/fmgdps/dp472.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Credibility and Cheap Talk of Securities Analysts:Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Jordi Blanes

Abstract

This paper studies how investors react to public messages that may be optimistically biased. We first construct a communication game between an investor and a (possibly) biased securities analyst. We find an equilibrium characterised by the following properties: first, the investor reacts more to bad news than to good news, and second, the di.erence in this reaction is higher when the investor has a greater prior suspicion that the analyst is a biased type. We then use nonparametric techniques and a large database of earnings forecasts to test these predictions, and find that the evidence supports them. Lastly, we use our empirical strategy to discriminate between the causes for analysts’ bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Jordi Blanes, 2003. "Credibility and Cheap Talk of Securities Analysts:Theory and Evidence," FMG Discussion Papers dp472, Financial Markets Group.
    • Handle: RePEc:fmg:fmgdps:dp472
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/fmg/workingPapers/discussionPapers/fmgdps/dp472.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter Norman, 2006. "The strategy of professional forecasting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 441-466, August.
    2. Lin, Hsiou-wei & McNichols, Maureen F., 1998. "Underwriting relationships, analysts' earnings forecasts and investment recommendations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 101-127, February.
    3. Krigman, Laurie & Shaw, Wayne H. & Womack, Kent L., 2001. "Why do firms switch underwriters?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 245-284, May.
    4. Daniel Kahneman & Dan Lovallo, 1993. "Timid Choices and Bold Forecasts: A Cognitive Perspective on Risk Taking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 17-31, January.
    5. Michael P. Keane & David E. Runkle, 1998. "Are Financial Analysts' Forecasts of Corporate Profits Rational?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(4), pages 768-805, August.
    6. Roland Benabou & Guy Laroque, 1992. "Using Privileged Information to Manipulate Markets: Insiders, Gurus, and Credibility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 921-958.
    7. Zitzewitz, Eric, 2001. "Measuring Herding and Exaggeration by Equity Analysts and Other Opinion Sellers," Research Papers 1802, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    8. Morgan, John & Stocken, Phillip C, 2003. "An Analysis of Stock Recommendations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(1), pages 183-203, Spring.
    9. Wouter Dessein, 2002. "Authority and Communication in Organizations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 811-838.
    10. Welch, Ivo, 2000. "Herding among security analysts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 369-396, December.
    11. Prendergast, Canice & Stole, Lars, 1996. "Impetuous Youngsters and Jaded Old-Timers: Acquiring a Reputation for Learning," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1105-1134, December.
    12. S.G. Badrinath & Sunil Wahal, 2002. "Momentum Trading by Institutions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(6), pages 2449-2478, December.
    13. Michaely, Roni & Womack, Kent L, 1999. "Conflict of Interest and the Credibility of Underwriter Analyst Recommendations," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 653-686.
    14. Krishna, Vijay, 2001. "Asymmetric Information and Legislative Rules: Some Amendments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(2), pages 435-452, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mehmet Y. Gurdal & Ayca Ozdogan & Ismail Saglam, 2011. "Truth-Telling and Trust in Sender-Receiver Games with Intervention," Working Papers 1106, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Department of Economics.
    2. Tobias Gesche, 2016. "De-biasing strategic communication," ECON - Working Papers 216, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Sep 2021.
    3. Stephen Baginski & Elizabeth Demers & Chong Wang & Julia Yu, 2016. "Contemporaneous verification of language: evidence from management earnings forecasts," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 165-197, March.
    4. Kartik, Navin & Ottaviani, Marco & Squintani, Francesco, 2007. "Credulity, lies, and costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 93-116, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blanes i Vidal, Jordi, 2003. "Credibility and cheap talk of securities analysts: theory and evidence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24897, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter Norman, 2006. "The strategy of professional forecasting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 441-466, August.
    3. Marinovic, Iván & Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter, 2013. "Forecasters’ Objectives and Strategies," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 690-720, Elsevier.
    4. Yen-Cheng Chang & Alexander Ljungqvist & Kevin Tseng, 2023. "Do Corporate Disclosures Constrain Strategic Analyst Behavior?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(8), pages 3163-3212.
    5. Friesen, Geoffrey & Weller, Paul A., 2006. "Quantifying cognitive biases in analyst earnings forecasts," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 333-365, November.
    6. Beyer, Anne & Cohen, Daniel A. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Walther, Beverly R., 2010. "The financial reporting environment: Review of the recent literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 296-343, December.
    7. Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sorensen, 2002. "Professional Advice: The Theory of Reputational Cheap Talk," Discussion Papers 02-05, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    8. Bizer, Kilian & Meub, Lukas & Proeger, Till & Spiwoks, Markus, 2014. "Strategic coordination in forecasting: An experimental study," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 195, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    9. Zitzewitz, Eric, 2001. "Measuring Herding and Exaggeration by Equity Analysts and Other Opinion Sellers," Research Papers 1802, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    10. Sunil Mohanty & Edward Aw, 2006. "Rationality of analysts' earnings forecasts: evidence from dow 30 companies," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(12), pages 915-929.
    11. Xiaojing Meng, 2015. "Analyst Reputation, Communication, and Information Acquisition," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(1), pages 119-173, March.
    12. Ramnath, Sundaresh & Rock, Steve & Shane, Philip, 2008. "The financial analyst forecasting literature: A taxonomy with suggestions for further research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 34-75.
    13. Murali Agastya & Parimal Kanti Bag & Indranil Chakraborty, 2014. "Communication and authority with a partially informed expert," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(1), pages 176-197, March.
    14. Po-Jung Chen, 2016. "The Effects of Analysts’ Herding on Traders: Evidence from the Taiwan Stock Market," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 23(2), pages 203-227, June.
    15. Zhi Da & Xing Huang, 2020. "Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 1847-1867, May.
    16. Cornett, Marcia Millon & Tehranian, Hassan & Yalcin, Atakan, 2007. "Regulation fair disclosure and the market's reaction to analyst investment recommendation changes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 567-588, March.
    17. Pavesi, Filippo & Scotti, Massimo, 2022. "Good lies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
      • Filippo Pavesi & Massimo Scotti, 2019. "Good Lies," Working Paper Series 39, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    18. Li, Ming & Madarász, Kristóf, 2008. "When mandatory disclosure hurts: Expert advice and conflicting interests," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 47-74, March.
    19. Sette, Enrico, 2011. "Competition and optimistic advice of financial analysts: Evidence from IPOs," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 441-457, July.
    20. Chen, Mark A. & Marquez, Robert, 2009. "Regulating securities analysts," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 259-283, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fmg:fmgdps:dp472. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The FMG Administration (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.lse.ac.uk/fmg/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.