We examine how increased competition stemming from an innovation in financial technology influences sell-side analyst research quality. We find that firms added to Estimize, an open platform that crowdsources short-term earnings forecasts, experience a pervasive and substantial reduction in consensus bias and a limited increase in consensus accuracy relative to matched control firms. Long-term forecasts and investment recommendations remain similarly biased, alleviating the concern that the documented reduction in bias is a response to broad economic forces. At the individual analyst level, we find that bias reduction is more pronounced among close-to-management analysts; and that more biased analysts respond by reducing their coverage of Estimize firms. The collective evidence suggests that competition from Estimize improves sell-side research quality by discouraging strategic bias.

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金融科技竞争能否提高卖方研究质量？

我们研究了金融技术创新导致的竞争加剧如何影响卖方分析师的研究质量。我们发现，与匹配控制公司相比，加入 Estimize（一个众包短期收益预测的开放平台）的公司普遍且大幅减少了共识偏差，并且共识准确性的提高有限。长期预测和投资建议仍然存在类似的偏见，减轻了人们对记录在案的偏见减少是对广泛经济力量的反应的担忧。在个人分析师层面，我们发现接近管理层的分析师的偏见减少更为明显；并且更有偏见的分析师通过减少他们对 Estimize 公司的覆盖范围来做出回应。