Paired analyst recommendations and internet IPOs

The paper investigates analyst recommendations for internet firms that went public during 1997-2000. Our contribution to the literature is that we match recommendations for the same firm issued by different investment banks that have published the recommendations in an interval around the same date. By examining paired recommendations all characteristics (observed but also unobserved) will be the same. The latter analyses offer empirical results that are different from analyses that do not control for the possibility that different types of investment banks issue recommendations for different firms. Furthermore, our empirical results provide evidence that an investment analyst recommendation is more favorable when the NASDAQ stock market is surging, the number of shares in the offering as percentage of the shares outstanding is greater and the analyst affiliation is from a co-lead manager.