IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v32y2019i3p905-950..html

Corporate Strategy, Conformism, and the Stock Market

Author

Listed:
  • Thierry Foucault
  • Laurent Fresard

Abstract

We show that product differentiation reduces the informativeness of a firm’s stock price (or its peers’ stock prices) about the value of its growth opportunities. This results in less efficient exercise of a firm’s growth options when managers rely on information in stock prices for their decisions. This informational cost of differentiation induces conformity in product market strategies and is larger for private firms. Hence, a firm should differentiate more after going public. We confirm this prediction empirically and show that the post-IPO increase in differentiation is stronger for firms with better informed managers or less informative peers’ stock prices.Received January 19, 2016; editorial decision May 8, 2018 by Editor Itay Goldstein. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • Thierry Foucault & Laurent Fresard, 2019. "Corporate Strategy, Conformism, and the Stock Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(3), pages 905-950.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:32:y:2019:i:3:p:905-950.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhy077
    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. Liu, Frank Hong & Norden, Lars & Spargoli, Fabrizio, 2020. "Does uniqueness in banking matter?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    2. Ghulam Hussain Khan Zaigham & Xiangning Wang & Haji Suleman Ali, 2019. "Causal Relation Between Stock Market Performance and Firm Investment in China: Mediating Role of Information Asymmetry," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(4), pages 21582440198, October.
    3. Caio Machado & Ana Elisa Pereira, 2023. "Optimal Capital Structure with Stock Market Feedback," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 27(4), pages 1329-1371.
    4. Caio Machado & Ana Elisa Pereira, 2020. "Competing for Stock Market Feedback," Documentos de Trabajo 545, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    5. Jaspersen, Stefan, 2021. "Mutual Fund Bets on Market Power," CFR Working Papers 16-07, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), revised 2021.
    6. Borochin, Paul & Yang, Jie, 2017. "Options, equity risks, and the value of capital structure adjustments," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 150-178.
    7. Itay Goldstein, 2023. "Information in Financial Markets and Its Real Effects," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 27(1), pages 1-32.
    8. Dow, James & Han, Jungsuk & Sangiorgi, Francesco, 2024. "The short-termism trap: Catering to informed investors with limited horizons," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    9. Xiong, Yan & Yang, Liyan, 2021. "Disclosure, competition, and learning from asset prices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    10. Paul Borochin & Jie Yang, 2016. "Options, Equity Risks, and the Value of Capital Structure Adjustments," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-097, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies

    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:32:y:2019:i:3:p:905-950.. 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.