Analyst following and R&D investment

Thomas Canace (), Jiao Li () and Tao Ma ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Canace: Wake Forest University
Jiao Li: Nova Southeastern University
Tao Ma: Texas Tech University

Review of Accounting Studies, 2024, vol. 29, issue 3, No 18, 2688-2723

Abstract: Abstract Exploiting an exogenous decrease in analyst access to private information, we show that firms with analyst following (test firms) experience a significant reduction in R&D investment, relative to firms without analyst following (control firms), after Reg FD. We also document that the negative impact on firms’ R&D investment after Reg FD is borne out in firms’ innovation outputs measured by patents. Additional analysis reveals that the decrease in R&D investment concentrates among test firms followed by influential analysts who likely had access to private information before Reg FD and among test firms facing disincentives to invest in R&D due to takeover pressure. Our inferences remain robust to various tests addressing potential bias arising from possible systematic differences between test and control firms. Overall this study demonstrates that private disclosures of R&D information through analysts mitigate managers’ R&D investment disincentives and facilitate innovation but that this channel is impeded by Reg FD.

Keywords: Analyst following; R&D Investment; Regulation Fair Disclosure; Innovation; Classification: G32; M4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11142-023-09766-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:reaccs:v:29:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s11142-023-09766-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/accounting/journal/11142

DOI: 10.1007/s11142-023-09766-9

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Accounting Studies is currently edited by Paul Fischer

More articles in Review of Accounting Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().