Good-Bye I/B/E/S (or Not?)

Stressed by IBES anonymization? Here is your best fix.

Law, K. K. F. (2023). Good-Bye I/B/E/S (or Not?). Journal of Financial Reporting, 8(1), 41-61.

Key takeaways:

• Analysts’ identities were anonymized for forecasts of non-U.S. companies, but not for U.S. companies.

• The anonymization started in 2017, earlier than I/B/E/S disclosed, so more data is affected than originally thought.

• Contrary to claims, there was no wide-scale scrambling of analysts’ IDs in recent years that would undermine research.

• The paper offers a method to uncover some anonymized analysts by cross-referencing with the largely unaffected analyst recommendations data.

Useful links:

• 2025 Update

• 2024 Update

• 2023 Update

• Download Stata Codes and Linking Table

• For a detailed cross-vintage merge recipe, see the tutorial: How to match IBES vintages without the landmines