We study the effects of social media on the informativeness of retail investor trading. Our identification strategy exploits the editorial delay between report submission and publication on Seeking Alpha, a popular crowdsourced investment research platform. We find the ability of retail order...

Debt research places greater importance on cash flow analysis and credit rating prediction than does equity research and is only available to equity analysts employed by the same broker. We show that equity analysts with access to high quality debt research issue cash flow forecasts for...

We investigate whether information possessed by rank-and-file employees is incorporated in top managers' expectations and decisions. Using employees' predictions of their company's business outlook from Glassdoor.com to measure the employees' information set, and using management earnings...

We use employee predictions of their companies' six-month business outlook from Glassdoor.com to assess the information content of employee social media disclosures. We find that average employee outlook is incrementally informative in predicting future operating performance. Its information...

We examine whether analysts tip investors during investor conferences. We find that conference-day abnormal returns of a presenting company are about 0.6% higher when the conference is hosted by an analyst who will initiate coverage with a Buy recommendation than when the conference is hosted by...

We examine whether increased competition stemming from technological innovation disciplines sell-side analysts. We document a decline in short-term forecast bias for firms added to Estimize, an open platform that crowdsources short-term earnings forecasts, relative to matched control firms; this...

We present new evidence that highlights the role of information intermediaries in the distribution and processing of earnings estimates in capital markets. We find that the time taken to activate an analyst's earnings forecast in the Thomson Reuters Institutional Brokers' Estimate System is...

We examine whether access to management at broker-hosted investor conferences leads to more informative research by analysts. We find analyst recommendation changes have larger immediate price impacts when the analyst's firm has a conference-hosting relationship with the company. The effect...

Crowdsourcing — when a task normally performed by employees is outsourced to a large network of people via an open call — is making inroads into the investment research industry. We shed light on this new phenomenon by examining the value of crowdsourced earnings forecasts. Our sample...