Analyst Information Discovery and Interpretation Roles: A Topic Modeling Approach
通过文本分析分析师报告和公司披露，发现分析师在电话会议后讨论独家主题并解读会议内容，投资者对分析师发现的新信息和解读反应积极，尤其在管理层隐瞒信息或会议信息处理成本高时。
This study examines analyst information intermediary roles using a textual analysis of analyst reports and corporate disclosures. We employ a topic modeling methodology from computational linguistic research to compare the thematic content of a large sample of analyst reports issued promptly after earnings conference calls with the content of the calls themselves. We show that analysts discuss exclusive topics beyond those from conference calls and interpret topics from conference calls. In addition, we find that investors place a greater value on new information in analyst reports when managers face greater incentives to withhold value-relevant information. Analyst interpretation is particularly valuable when the processing costs of conference call information increase. Finally, we document that investors react to analyst report content that simply confirms managers’ conference call discussions. Overall, our study shows that analysts play the information intermediary roles by discovering information beyond corporate disclosures and by clarifying and confirming corporate disclosures. The Internet appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2751 . This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.