Sell‐side analysts as social intermediaries
通过访谈中国分析师、基金经理和投资者关系官员，揭示分析师如何建立短期和长期社会关系，形成社会网络基础设施，从而发挥信息中介作用。
Abstract Recent research on sell‐side analysts emphasizes the centrality of social ties and social interactions to what they do. However, we know little about how analysts create or maintain relationships over both the short and long terms. We remedy that in this qualitative study by illustrating the microlevel processes that analysts engage in as part of developing a network of relations around them. Starting from the premise that economic actions are embedded in social relations and drawing on interviews with analysts, fund managers, and investor relations officers in China, we show how analysts forge both weak and strong social ties to create an infrastructure of social networks that is foundational to information intermediation. This perspective broadens our understanding of sell‐side analysts as social, rather than solely information, intermediaries and highlights how information asymmetries often have a social basis.