To what extent conflicts of interest affect the investment value of sell-side analyst research is an ongoing debate. We approach this issue from a new direction by investigating how asset-management divisions of investment banks use stock recommendations issued by their own analysts. Based on...

Previous research finds that stock analysts exhibit both optimistic and pessimistic biases in their earnings forecasts, with the net result being a consistent, but declining, overestimation of forecasted earnings. We extend this research by examining the potential effect of Seasonal Affective...