We study whether sell-side financial analysts' physical attractiveness is associated with their job performance. We find that attractive analysts make more accurate earnings forecasts than less attractive analysts. Moreover, more attractive analysts make stock recommendations that are more...

The measurement difficulties arising from relationship-based business transactions can result in accounting opacity. We test this hypothesis by exploiting a natural experiment. Using a sample of firms that were networked with 45 high-level Chinese bureaucrats involved in corruption scandals...