Gender and beauty in the financial analyst profession: evidence from the United States and China

This study examines whether institutional investors’ voting for All-Star financial analysts is affected by analyst beauty. Using a sample of 1,135 U.S. analysts and controlling for analyst performance, we document that beauty, on average, does not affect the outcome of All-Star analyst voting. However, a beauty premium emerges in those sectors where there is high information asymmetry on analyst performance between analysts and fund managers. We further find that good-looking female U.S. analysts are less likely to be voted All-Star analysts. Our evidence implies that the beauty premium can be mitigated by a strong economic force such as low information asymmetry.