Access to management and the informativeness of analyst research

We examine whether access to management at broker-hosted investor conferences leads to more informative research by analysts. We find analyst recommendation changes have larger immediate price impacts when the analyst's firm has a conference-hosting relation with the company. The effect increases with hosting frequency and is strongest in the days following the conference. Conference-hosting brokers also issue more informative, accurate, and timely earnings forecasts than non-hosts. Our findings suggest that access to management remains an important source of analysts' informational advantage in the post-Regulation Fair Disclosure world. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.