and the Swedish Institute for Finance Research for very helpful comments. We also thank Russell Investments for providing data and He Ai for her research assistance. The internet appendix is available online at http://www.princeton.edu/~hhong/rd2000appendix NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

and the Swedish Institute for Finance Research for very helpful comments. We also thank Russell Investments for providing data and He Ai for her research assistance. The internet appendix is available online at http://www.princeton.edu/~hhong/rd2000appendix NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

We show that analyst behavior changes in response to a randomly assigned shock that exogenously varies the timeliness and cost of accessing mandatory disclosures in the cross-section of investors: analysts reduce coverage and issue less optimistic, more accurate, less bold, and less informative forecasts. Our evidence indicates that analysts reduce a strategic component of their behavior: the changes are stronger among analysts with more strategic incentives like affiliated or retail-focused analysts. We conclude that mandatory disclosure can substitute for analyst information production, which is constrained by investors’ ability to verify forecasts using corporate filings.

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