Conformism, Public News and Market Effciency.

We study the implications of conformism among analysts in a CARA Gaussian model of the market for a risky asset, where a trader's in- formation is a message sent by an analyst. Conformism increases the weight of the public information in the messages, decreasing their in- formativeness. More pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Desgranges, G, Rochon, C
Format: Working paper
Language:English
Published: Oxford Finance 2008
Description
Summary:We study the implications of conformism among analysts in a CARA Gaussian model of the market for a risky asset, where a trader's in- formation is a message sent by an analyst. Conformism increases the weight of the public information in the messages, decreasing their in- formativeness. More precise public information does not always result in more precise messages. A larger precision of the analysts informa- tion does not always make the market more liquid and the price more informative. Conformism creates an overreaction of the price to pub- lic information. Using the price as a public signal does not alter the results.