Analyst Coverage Networks and Corporate Financial Policies
利用分析师覆盖网络研究公司财务政策中的同群效应，发现企业会直接模仿同行资本结构选择，分析师作为信息中介强化了这种效应，且该效应在分析师经验更丰富或来自更有影响力的券商时更显著。
We use the setting of analyst coverage networks to shed light on the nature of peer effects in financial policies. First, we use the “friends-of-friends” approach and exploit the fact that analyst coverage networks partially overlap to identify endogenous peer effects, in which firms respond directly to the capital structure choices of their peers, separately from contextual effects, in which they respond to their peers’ characteristics. We further show evidence that analysts facilitate these peer effects through their role as informational intermediaries. Analyst network peer effects are distinct from industry peer effects and are more pronounced among peers connected by analysts that are more experienced and from more influential brokerage houses. Finally, the analyst peer effects become weaker after exogenous reductions in common coverage as a consequence of brokerage closures. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Funding: F. Marcet acknowledges funding from ANID/CONICYT Proyecto FONDECYT Iniciacion [Grant 11221187]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4891 .