Information complementarities and supply chain analysts

Abstract

This study examines the antecedents and consequences of analysts choosing to become supply chain analysts (i.e., analysts following both a supplier and its major customer). We find that information complementarities between firms in the same supply chain, between a supplier firm and its industry peer firms, and between the supplier's major customer and other firms in analysts' portfolio affect their supply chain specialization decision. The potential revenues supplier firms generate for analysts' brokerage houses also significantly affect this decision. While supply chain analysts achieve superior forecast performance compared to non-supply chain analysts for supplier firms, they provide lower-quality forecasts for other firms in their portfolios. These findings suggest that analysts allocate resources strategically. Our results are robust to techniques designed to address the potential endogeneity of analysts' supply chain portfolio choices.