Can Social Media Inform Corporate Decisions? Evidence from Merger Withdrawals

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cookson, J. Anthony; Niessner, Marina; Schiller, Christoph
• 署名单位: University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder; Indiana University System; IU Kelley School of Business; Indiana University Bloomington; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF FINANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1082; 1540-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13508
• 发表日期: 2026-02
• 页码: 91-142
• 关键词: INVESTMENT SENSITIVITY; financial-markets; Textual analysis; stock-prices; firm; Informativeness; acquisition; PROVISIONS; news

摘要

This paper studies whether social media sentiment predicts merger withdrawals. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in social media sentiment after a merger announcement is associated with a 0.64 percentage point lower probability of withdrawal (16.6% of the average). This effect is unexplained by abnormal price reactions, traditional news, and analyst recommendations. Consistent with manager learning, the informativeness of social media strengthens after firms start corporate Twitter accounts. The informativeness is driven by longer acquisition-related tweets by fundamental investors, rather than memes and price trend tweets. These findings suggest that social media signals can be important for corporate decisions.