Can Social Media Inform Corporate Decisions? Evidence from Merger Withdrawals
研究发现，并购公告后社交媒体情绪每增加一个标准差，撤回概率降低0.64个百分点，且该效应不能被股价反应、传统新闻和分析师建议解释，表明社交媒体信号对企业决策有参考价值。
ABSTRACT 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.