Individual analysts, stock return synchronicity and information efficiency

To shed light on whether and how effective are analysts as information intermediaries, we construct the information efficiency indicator and investigate the information performance of China's analysts from the perspective of heterogeneous individual analysts based on stock return synchronicity. Furthermore, we verify the rationality and generalization of information efficiency based on the regression of primary and expanded indicators on stock characteristics and analyst characteristics. Our indicator provides a novel method to accurately measure analysts' information performance from the level of individual analysts rather than from a homogeneous community or heterogeneous group and highlights the analysts' roles as the information intermediaries.