信息过载是否影响投资者对公开信息的使用——来自季度盈余的实证证据

首季季报之所以可能导致投资者的信息过载原因有二 :一是许多公司在同一天披露其季报 ;二是公司的年报和季报有可能同时披露。我们的结果说明了信息的集中披露本身并不妨碍投资者对信息的及时利用 ,这些发现对我国资本市场上信息披露监管机构有着直接的政策性含义。

Does Information Overload Affect Investors' Use of Public Information? Empirical Evidence from Quarterly Earnings

Using the earnings for the first quarter of 2002, this study investigates whether the information overload would impede investors' prompt use of publicly available information. We attribute financial media's doubts on the usefulness of quarterly reports to the effects of information overload, i.e., investors' limited assimilation ability hinders value-relevant information from being incorporated into stock prices immediately. There are two reasons why the first-quarter reports could overload the investors: one is that a large number of companies disclose their quarterly reports on the same day, and the other is that annual reports could be disclosed simultaneously with quarterly ones. After showing that quarterly earnings are priced by the market, we report evidence that is contradictory to the overload argument. Therefore, the clustering of disclosure per se does not appear to have an adverse impact on investors' prompt use of the information. These findings can yield policy implications for regulators who are in charge of disclosure issues in China's capital market.