Status, luck and quality: How luck and quality play a role in shaping status positions in financial markets

A substantial economic sociology literature has demonstrated the benefits and constraints of high status positions for individuals, firms and markets, under the assumption that past performance and network ties are the antecedents of status formulation. Moreover, the consequences of high status positions have been shown to be the result of the notion that status acts as a signal for quality in uncertain contexts. My dissertation, however, proposes that luck plays a role in pushing an actor into a high status position and that luck also has a consequential impact on future behavior patterns. In addition, I test whether status signals remain relevant once new information about quality becomes available. I define and propose a luck measure in the context of Wall Street analysts' performance and status ranking and I investigate the relationships between luck, quality and status in various phases of status accumulation.;First, I analyze the likelihood of being elected as a Wall Street star analyst. I demonstrate that luck, beyond actual analytical ability, increases the initial likelihood of becoming a star analyst. And once this high status position has been achieved, the probability of maintaining it increases.;Second, I provide an exemplifying natural experiment that disentangles status from quality to determine the effect of status on market players' behavior. I show that after an exogenous shock to star analysts' quality, market investors switch their attention from status as a signal of quality to more direct quality indicators. Investors are quick to update their behavior once new information reveals a decline in quality of high status analysts.;Finally, I demonstrate that lucky star analysts, who rise to a stardom that surpasses their actual analytical abilities, continue to display different coverage patterns: they initiate coverage based on firms' past high returns, issue recommendation that are more pessimistic, are more likely to herd and are quicker to drop coverage when firms do not perform as expected.;Overall, my dissertation shows that luck is a factor in determining an actor's initial high status position and future analysis patterns, and that market actors first rely on status signals but later incorporate new informative data.