Abstract

This paper documents that, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, analysts increase their research activity and significantly revise their forecasts when compared to the pre-pandemic period. Uncertainty-adjusted forecast errors are either comparable or smaller during the pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic period. Investor attention and price reactions to analyst forecast revisions are higher during the pandemic and the effect is stronger in periods where investors actively search for information about firms. During the pandemic, investors value analyst price discovery role more than their role in interpreting public information. Jointly, the results suggest that analysts play an important information intermediation role during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author. Abacus published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Accounting Foundation, The University of Sydney. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Publisher Keywords:	COVID-19; Coronavirus; analysts; forecast accuracy; price reactions; information discovery; information intermediation
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HG Finance Q Science > QR Microbiology > QR180 Immunology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Finance

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