Chapter I Does the Market React Differently to Lead versus Follow Analyst Recommendations? Abstract We identify lead and follow analysts based on the timeliness of their recommendations, documenting more pronounced market reactions to the buy/hold/sell ratings issued by the analysts who systematically provide their recommendations ahead of the others. In some ways, our methodology is similar to that of Cooper, Day, and Lewis (2001), who ranked analysts by the timeliness in their earnings forecasts. Nevertheless, it may be more challenging but equally as valuable to identify the leaders and followers among the analysts in terms of their recommendations. Chapter II Do Analysts Adequately Incorporate Discretionary Accruals into Investment Recommendations? Abstract In this paper, we examine whether security analysts “adequately” incorporate discretionary accruals into their recommendations. Prior research documents that investors, as reflected by stock price behavior, tend to overestimate the persistence of accruals. This paper seeks to investigate whether analysts, as representatives of sophisticated market participants, help investors to assess the valuation implications of discretionary accruals. As consistent with the notion that analysts fail to fully incorporate the information of discretionary accruals into their investment recommendations, we demonstrate profitable investment strategies based upon both analyst recommendations and discretionary accruals. Moreover, we document pronounced long-run price reversals with firms in the first quartile for discretionary accruals regardless of the recommendations. Our sensitivity tests show that recommendations by analysts in the All-American group are also subject to such bias.