Price Rigidities and the Value of Public Information
研究发现，企业调整产出价格的刚性会加剧利润信息不对称，而政府披露的经济统计等公共信息能显著降低刚性价格企业的买卖价差、知情交易概率和分析师预测分歧，但对弹性价格企业无效。
ABSTRACT Firms' inflexibility in adjusting output prices to economic shocks exacerbates information asymmetry with respect to firms' profits, but public information on firms' cost structure mitigates this problem. We construct a novel form of public information from economic statistics disclosed by the government and find that such public information significantly reduces inflexible‐price firms' bid–ask spreads, the probability of informed trading, and analyst forecast dispersions, but these results do not hold for flexible‐price firms. Security analysts seek more cost‐related information during conference calls about inflexible‐price firms, but such a phenomenon is observed less frequently if a firm's input cost is more publicly observable. In addition, stock markets react more strongly to earning news announced by inflexible‐price firms, consistent with our intuition.