Competing Earnings Announcements: Which Announcement Do Investors Process First?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Frederickson, James R.; Zolotoy, Leon
• 署名单位: University of Melbourne
• 刊物名称: ACCOUNTING REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-4826
• DOI: 10.2308/accr-51190
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 441-462
• 关键词: limited attention; INFORMATION; Sophistication; returns; determinants; disclosure; visibility; management; OWNERSHIP; ANALYST

摘要

Consistent with investors having limited attention, we posit that when faced with competing earnings announcements, investors behave as if they queue the announcements based on a firm or earnings announcement attribute. We focus on two potential queuing attributes: (1) firm visibility, and (2) the expected cost of processing the earnings announcements. We find no support for queuing based on the latter, but find a statistically significant and economically meaningful queuing effect based on firm visibility. Earnings announcements made by firms that are more visible than a given firm but not by firms that are less visible mitigate the announcement window market response to that firm's unexpected earnings, with a corresponding magnification in its post-earnings announcement drift. Further, the effects of visibility-based queuing are more pronounced for days with greater clustering of earnings announcements. Additional analysis suggests that individual investors not institutional investors drive the queuing effect.