IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v152y2024ics0304405x23002027.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disagreement about public information quality and informational price efficiency

Author

Listed:
  • Huang, Chong
  • Lunawat, Radhika
  • Wang, Qiguang

Abstract

Investors often hold differing opinions on public information quality. This paper shows that such investor disagreement provides a novel explanation for financial market dynamics around earnings announcements. We propose a rational expectations equilibrium model where investors disagree about the precision of a public signal, which separates a pre-news trading period from a post-news trading period. In equilibrium, investor disagreement about public signal precision diminishes informational price efficiency before the news, but enhances it afterward. Consequently, investor disagreement leads to a notable jump in informed trading around the news, a decline in abnormal trading volume before the news and a surge immediately after the news, and underreaction of stock price to announced earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • Huang, Chong & Lunawat, Radhika & Wang, Qiguang, 2024. "Disagreement about public information quality and informational price efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:152:y:2024:i:c:s0304405x23002027
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2023.103762
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X23002027
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfineco.2023.103762?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xavier Vives, 2017. "Endogenous Public Information and Welfare in Market Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 935-963.
    2. Manuel Amador & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2010. "Learning from Prices: Public Communication and Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(5), pages 866-907.
    3. Joon Chae, 2005. "Trading Volume, Information Asymmetry, and Timing Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 413-442, February.
    4. Giovanni Cespa & Xavier Vives, 2015. "The Beauty Contest and Short-Term Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(5), pages 2099-2154, October.
    5. Kandel, Eugene & Pearson, Neil D, 1995. "Differential Interpretation of Public Signals and Trade in Speculative Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(4), pages 831-872, August.
    6. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    7. Xavier Vives, 1993. "How Fast do Rational Agents Learn?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(2), pages 329-347.
    8. Dechow, Patricia & Ge, Weili & Schrand, Catherine, 2010. "Understanding earnings quality: A review of the proxies, their determinants and their consequences," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 344-401, December.
    9. Glosten, Lawrence R. & Milgrom, Paul R., 1985. "Bid, ask and transaction prices in a specialist market with heterogeneously informed traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-100, March.
    10. Michael J. Brennan & Sahn-Wook Huh & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2018. "High-Frequency Measures of Informed Trading and Corporate Announcements," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(6), pages 2326-2376.
    11. Hendershott, Terrence & Livdan, Dmitry & Schürhoff, Norman, 2015. "Are institutions informed about news?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 249-287.
    12. Luca Colombo & Gianluca Femminis & Alessandro Pavan, 2014. "Information Acquisition and Welfare," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(4), pages 1438-1483.
    13. Sheng, Xuguang (Simon) & Thevenot, Maya, 2015. "Quantifying differential interpretation of public information using financial analysts’ earnings forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 515-530.
    14. Roychowdhury, Sugata, 2006. "Earnings management through real activities manipulation," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 335-370, December.
    15. Azi Ben-Rephael & Zhi Da & Ryan D. Israelsen, 2017. "It Depends on Where You Search: Institutional Investor Attention and Underreaction to News," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(9), pages 3009-3047.
    16. Krinsky, Itzhak & Lee, Jason, 1996. "Earnings Announcements and the Components of the Bid-Ask Spread," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1523-1535, September.
    17. Snehal Banerjee & Ron Kaniel & Ilan Kremer, 2009. "Price Drift as an Outcome of Differences in Higher-Order Beliefs," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3707-3734, September.
    18. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    19. Lundholm, Rj, 1991. "Public Signals And The Equilibrium Allocation Of Private Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 322-349.
    20. Franklin Allen & Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2006. "Beauty Contests and Iterated Expectations in Asset Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(3), pages 719-752.
    21. H. Henry Cao & Hui Ou-Yang, 2009. "Differences of Opinion of Public Information and Speculative Trading in Stocks and Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 299-335, January.
    22. Lee, Charles M C & Mucklow, Belinda & Ready, Mark J, 1993. "Spreads, Depths, and the Impact of Earnings Information: An Intraday Analysis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 345-374.
    23. Ikenberry, David & Lakonishok, Josef & Vermaelen, Theo, 1995. "Market underreaction to open market share repurchases," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2-3), pages 181-208.
    24. Desai, Hemang & Jain, Prem C, 1997. "Long-Run Common Stock Returns following Stock Splits and Reverse Splits," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(3), pages 409-433, July.
    25. Bernard, Vl & Thomas, Jk, 1989. "Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift - Delayed Price Response Or Risk Premium," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27, pages 1-36.
    26. Ilia D. Dichev & Joseph D. Piotroski, 2001. "The Long‐Run Stock Returns Following Bond Ratings Changes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 173-203, February.
    27. Snehal Banerjee & Ilan Kremer, 2010. "Disagreement and Learning: Dynamic Patterns of Trade," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1269-1302, August.
    28. Loughran, Tim & Ritter, Jay R, 1995. "The New Issues Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 23-51, March.
    29. Chung, Richard & Firth, Michael & Kim, Jeong-Bon, 2002. "Institutional monitoring and opportunistic earnings management," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 29-48, January.
    30. Kerry Back & Kevin Crotty & Tao Li, 2018. "Identifying Information Asymmetry in Securities Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(6), pages 2277-2325.
    31. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1993. "Differences of Opinion Make a Horse Race," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(3), pages 473-506.
    32. Snehal Banerjee, 2011. "Learning from Prices and the Dispersion in Beliefs," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(9), pages 3025-3068.
    33. J. Anthony Cookson & Marina Niessner, 2020. "Why Don't We Agree? Evidence from a Social Network of Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(1), pages 173-228, February.
    34. I. Krinsky & J. Lee, 1996. "Earning Announcements and the Components of the Bid-Ask Aspread," Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population Research Reports 313, McMaster University.
    35. Bamber, Linda Smith & Barron, Orie E. & Stober, Thomas L., 1999. "Differential Interpretations and Trading Volume," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(3), pages 369-386, September.
    36. J. Michael Harrison & David M. Kreps, 1978. "Speculative Investor Behavior in a Stock Market with Heterogeneous Expectations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 92(2), pages 323-336.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    2. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    3. Banerjee, Snehal & Green, Brett, 2015. "Signal or noise? Uncertainty and learning about whether other traders are informed," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 398-423.
    4. Crego, Julio A., 2020. "Why does public news augment information asymmetries?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 72-89.
    5. Elisabeth Kempf & Margarita Tsoutsoura, 2021. "Partisan Professionals: Evidence from Credit Rating Analysts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(6), pages 2805-2856, December.
    6. Han, Bing & Tang, Ya & Yang, Liyan, 2016. "Public information and uninformed trading: Implications for market liquidity and price efficiency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 604-643.
    7. Lili Dai & Jerry T. Parwada & Donald W. Winchester & Bohui Zhang, 2022. "The more we know, the less we agree: A test of the trading horizon heterogeneity theory," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 45-67, February.
    8. Terrance Odean., 1996. "Volume, Volatility, Price and Profit When All Trader Are Above Average," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-266, University of California at Berkeley.
    9. Pavan, Alessandro & Vives, Xavier, 2015. "Information, Coordination, and Market Frictions: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 407-426.
    10. Paul Fischer & Chongho Kim & Frank Zhou, 2022. "Disagreement about fundamentals: measurement and consequences," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 1423-1456, December.
    11. Bohmann, Marc & Michayluk, David & Patel, Vinay & Walsh, Kathleen, 2019. "Liquidity and earnings in event studies: Does data granularity matter?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 118-131.
    12. Choy, Siu Kai & Wei, Jason, 2012. "Option trading: Information or differences of opinion?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 2299-2322.
    13. Giovanni Cespa & Xavier Vives, 2011. "Expectations, Liquidity, and Short-term Trading," CESifo Working Paper Series 3390, CESifo.
    14. Danny Lo, 2015. "Essays in Market Microstructure and Investor Trading," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 4-2015, March.
    15. Chung, Kee H. & Kim, Oliver & Lim, Steve C. & Yang, Sean, 2019. "An analytical measure of market underreaction to earnings news," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 612-624.
    16. Robert Bloomfield & Paul E. Fischer, 2011. "Disagreement and the Cost of Capital," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(1), pages 41-68, March.
    17. Barakat, Ahmed & Chernobai, Anna & Wahrenburg, Mark, 2014. "Information asymmetry around operational risk announcements," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 152-179.
    18. Danny Lo, 2015. "Essays in Market Microstructure and Investor Trading," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 22, July-Dece.
    19. Wei Xiong, 2013. "Bubbles, Crises, and Heterogeneous Beliefs," NBER Working Papers 18905, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Monaco, Eleonora & Ibikunle, Gbenga & Palumbo, Riccardo & Zhang, Zeyu, 2022. "The liquidity and trading activity effects of acquisition payment methods: Evidence from the announcements of private firms' acquisitions," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Investor disagreement; Informational price efficiency; Dynamic REE model; Trading volume; Price underreaction;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:152:y:2024:i:c:s0304405x23002027. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.