The literature examining analyst activity assumes that access to management is valued by analysts and their employers. We propose a readily observable measure of access: how often an analyst is invited to be among the first to ask questions in the Q&A session of an earnings conference call....

We study information production and diffusion resulting from dynamic interactions between different types of informed investors in financial markets. Using a theoretical framework that exploits the setting of the Q&A section of earnings conference calls, we predict that information production...