Date of Award
2017
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Graduate Group
Accounting
First Advisor
Catherine M. Schrand
Abstract
How well do investors distinguish information that already is priced from genuinely novel and ex-
clusive private information? This paper examines whether investors misweight information that
already is in stock prices (“redundant information”) in making their trading decisions, and whether
this misweighting is associated with investors’ information processing frictions or behavioral biases. I
extend the Kyle (1985) model to allow for non-Bayesian updating and transaction costs. The model
predicts that price changes exhibit a state space process, in which the parameter for investors’ non-
Bayesian weighting of redundant information is estimable distinctly from information asymmetry
and transaction costs. Using this model, I estimate a firm-quarter measure of investors’ misweighting
of redundant information. I find that, on average, investors behave as if the information content in
the immediately prior price change is private information. This overweighting of redundant infor-
mation appears higher when investors have less time to process information, stock prices are less
informative, and industry-wide information is less costly to obtain. Overall, these results suggest
one way that information processing frictions contribute to momentum and mean reversion in stock
price returns.
Recommended Citation
Carniol, Michael P., "Redundant Information And Predictable Stock Price Returns" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2202.
https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2202