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

No identity crisis here: Analyst research prevails despite IBES analyst anonymization 

Key takeaways:

• Analysts' identities were anonymized for forecasts of non-U.S. companies, but not for U.S. companies, impacting international research.

• 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.

• 2024 Update

• 2023 Update