Mitigating the Influence of Analysts Who Issue Aggressive Stock Price Targets: The Role of Joint Versus Separate Evaluation*
通过两个实验发现，当投资者同时评估多个分析师的股价目标和盈利预测时，相比单独评估，更能识别出激进分析师的策略性行为，从而减少被过度影响的风险。
ABSTRACT Investors frequently rely on individual analysts' stock price targets. Aggressive price targets often reflect analysts' attempts to strategically influence investors. Therefore, investors' welfare may be compromised if they take aggressive price targets at face value. In this study, we examine conditions under which investors are more likely to infer that analysts who issue aggressive price targets are acting strategically. Investors can evaluate multiple analysts' price targets with or without other related information (e.g., earnings estimates). Investors can also evaluate the information provided by multiple analysts jointly or separately one analyst at a time. Two experiments find that as predicted, when investors evaluate multiple analysts' price targets without earnings estimates, there is no difference in investors' perceptions about whether the aggressive analyst is acting strategically across joint versus separate evaluation. However, also as predicted, when investors evaluate multiple analysts' price targets along with their earnings estimates, investors perceive the aggressive analyst as acting more strategically under joint evaluation than under separate evaluation. Our findings suggest that jointly evaluating multiple analysts' price targets with other related information, such as earnings estimates, can reduce the likelihood that investors would be overly influenced by aggressive analysts.