Locked-in at home: The gender difference in analyst forecasts after the COVID-19 school closures
研究新冠疫情学校关闭对分析师预测的影响，发现有孩子的女性分析师比男性分析师更少及时发布预测，且预测准确性下降，但会优先维持对重要公司的预测质量。
This paper explores the shock of school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to study the effect of childcare responsibilities on analyst forecasts. With manually collected data on whether analysts have children, I find that female analysts with children (mother analysts) are less likely to issue timely forecasts after school closures, compared to male analysts with children (father analysts). Mother analysts’ forecasts also become less accurate after school closures, but the negative effect only exists among forecasts for firms with relatively low institutional ownership, suggesting that mother analysts prioritize maintaining the forecast accuracy for firms that are more important to their careers. Additionally, mother analysts shift forecast release times to avoid childcare hours. My findings imply that childcare responsibilities hurt the productivity of mother analysts more than that of father analysts, even though these women have established themselves in a competitive industry.