Conflicts of Interest and Stock Recommendations: The Effects of the Global Settlement and Related Regulations

Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang and Tzachi Zach

Review of Financial Studies, 2009, vol. 22, issue 10, pages 4189-4217

Abstract: We study the effect of the Global Analyst Research Settlement and related regulations on sell-side research. These regulations attempted to mitigate the interdependence between research and investment banking. We document that following the regulations many brokerage houses have migrated from the traditional five-tier rating system to a three-tier system. Optimistic recommendations have become less frequent and more informative, whereas neutral and pessimistic recommendations have become more frequent and less informative. Importantly, the overall informativeness of recommendations has declined. The likelihood of issuing optimistic recommendations no longer depends on affiliation with the covered firm, although affiliated analysts are still reluctant to issue pessimistic recommendations. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhn109 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:22:y:2009:i:10:p:4189-4217

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www4.oup.co.uk/revfin/subinfo/

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Financial Studies is edited by Maureen O'Hara

More articles in Review of Financial Studies from Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies
Address: Oxford University Press, Journals Department, 2001 Evans Road, Cary, NC 27513 USA.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().