IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v30y2017i6p2179-2228..html

The Freedom of Information Act and the Race Toward Information Acquisition

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Gargano
  • Alberto G. Rossi
  • Russ Wermers

Abstract

We document a little-known source of information exploited by sophisticated institutional investors: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law that allows for the disclosure of previously unreleased information by the U.S. Government. Through FOIA requests, we identify several sophisticated institutional investors, chiefly hedge funds, that request information from the FDA. We explore the type of information commonly requested by funds and the types of firms that are targets of FDA-FOIA requests and show that FOIA requests allow these investors to generate abnormal returns. Thus, we illustrate a detailed mechanism through which costly information becomes incorporated into market prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Gargano & Alberto G. Rossi & Russ Wermers, 2017. "The Freedom of Information Act and the Race Toward Information Acquisition," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 2179-2228.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:30:y:2017:i:6:p:2179-2228.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhw035
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kumar, Nitish & Mullally, Kevin & Ray, Sugata & Tang, Yuehua, 2020. "Prime (information) brokerage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(2), pages 371-391.
    2. David Kreitmeir & Nathan Lane & Paul A. Raschky, 2020. "The Value of Names - Civil Society, Information, and Governing Multinationals on the Global Periphery," SoDa Laboratories Working Paper Series 2020-10, Monash University, SoDa Laboratories.
    3. Jiang, Hao & Ma, Yong & Wang, Tianyang, 2025. "Too many irons in the fire: The impact of limited institutional attention on market microstructure and efficiency," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    4. Boone, Audra L. & Floros, Ioannis V. & Johnson, Shane A., 2016. "Redacting proprietary information at the initial public offering," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 102-123.
    5. Alan Crane & Kevin Crotty & Tarik Umar, 2023. "Hedge Funds and Public Information Acquisition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3241-3262, June.
    6. Francesco D'Acunto & Alberto G. Rossi & Michael Weber & Michael Weber, 2019. "Crowdsourcing financial information to change spending behavior," CESifo Working Paper Series 7533, CESifo.
    7. Pei, Duo & Vasarhelyi, Miklos A., 2020. "Big data and algorithmic trading against periodic and tangible asset reporting: The need for U-XBRL," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    8. Braiden Coleman & Kenneth Merkley & Brian Miller & Joseph Pacelli, 2021. "Does the Freedom of Information Act Foil the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Intent to Keep Investigations Confidential?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3419-3428, June.
    9. Sumit Agarwal & Wenlan Qian & Xin Zou, 2021. "Disaggregated Sales and Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(11), pages 7167-7183, November.
    10. Xiong, Yan, 2022. "Comments on “Information acquisition and expected returns: Evidence from EDGAR search traffic,” by Weikai Li and Chengzhu Sun," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    11. Cheng, C.S. Agnes & Huang, Henry He & Lei, Zhen & Lu, Haitian, 2024. "Ex ante litigation risk and firm restatement decisions: Evidence from district courts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    12. Eliezer Fich & Viktoriya Lantushenko & Clemens Sialm, 2019. "Institutional Trading Around M&A Announcements," NBER Working Papers 25814, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Liao Xu & Xiangkang Yin & Jing Zhao, 2022. "Are the flows of exchange‐traded funds informative?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 51(4), pages 1165-1200, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    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:oup:rfinst:v:30:y:2017:i:6:p:2179-2228.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    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.