The Value of Analysts’ Recommendations and the Organization of Financial Research*

Brokerage houses usually organize their research activities by country or economic sector. We evaluate which research structure provides most value to investors. To do so, we study the relative information content of recommendations issued by country-specialized analysts and sector-specialized analysts. Our findings show that the former issue more valuable recommendations. The strength of country-specific commonalities explains at least part of the better performance of country-specialized financial analysts. Surprisingly, although analysts’ geographic location has been shown in the literature to be a determinant of earnings forecast accuracy, it is not a source of a comparative advantage when it comes to stock recommendations.