Disagreement about public information quality and informational price efficiency

Chong Huang*, Radhika Lunawat, Qiguang Wang

*Corresponding author for this work

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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.
Original languageEnglish
Article number103762
Number of pages21
JournalJournal of Financial Economics
Volume152
Early online date2 Dec 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2024

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Economics and Econometrics
  • Accounting
  • Finance
  • Strategy and Management

User-Defined Keywords

  • Dynamic REE model
  • Informational price efficiency
  • Investor disagreement
  • Price underreaction
  • Trading volume

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