Peer effects in professional analysts’ choice of their portfolio of companies
研究发现分析师在选择覆盖公司组合时存在同伴效应，即模仿其他分析师的行为，且主要受其他分析师业绩的影响，而非个人经验。
Analysts’ earnings forecasts are well known to be affected by herding behavior. This article provides evidence that herding might also play a role in analysts’ choice of coverage portfolio. Using the I/B/E/S database we show that there are strong peer effects at work in analysts’ choice of their portfolio of companies that go beyond specialization in teams and for certain sectors. To identify the factors driving these findings, we adopt a model of link formation within the bipartite network defined by analyst-company pairs. The strongest influence on imitation comes from the performance of other analysts. In contrast, professional experience and other individual characteristics seem to exert only a minor influence.