Why Does Cross-Sectional Analyst Coverage Incorporate Market-Wide Information?

TL;DR

This paper explores how analyst coverage in stock markets reflects market-wide information and follows an exponential distribution pattern.

Contribution

The paper introduces an entropy-based explanation for why analyst coverage incorporates market-wide information.

Findings

Analyst coverage in China's stock markets follows an exponential distribution.

Analyst coverage negatively predicts stock-market uncertainty.

Analysts primarily produce market-wide information across 25 countries.

Abstract

This paper shows that the empirical distribution of cross-sectional analyst coverage in China’s stock markets follows an exponential law in a given month from 2011 to 2020. The findings hold in both the emerging (Shanghai) and the developed market (Hong Kong). Moreover, the unique distribution parameter (i.e., mean) is directly related to the amount of market-wide information. Average analyst coverage exhibits a significant negative predictive power for stock-market uncertainty, highlighting the role of security analysts in diminishing the total uncertainty. The exponential law can be derived from the maximum entropy principle (MEP). When analysts, who are constrained by average ability in generating information (i.e., the first-order moment), strive to maximize the amount of market-wide information, this objective yields the exponential distribution. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that security analysts specialize in the generation of firm-specific information, empirical findings suggest that analysts primarily produce market-wide information for 25 countries. Nevertheless, it remains unclear why cross-sectional analyst coverage reflects market-wide information, this paper provides an entropy-based explanation.

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