Publication Type
Conference Paper
Publication Date
7-2018
Abstract
This paper investigates the effects of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on the real efficiency of the underlying securities. We document strong evidence that being held by ETFs increases the sensitivity of a firm's investment to its own stock price. This is consistent with the model prediction on the managerial learning channel. Higher ownership by ETFs increases the firm's stock price informativeness about systematic shocks but may decrease the informativeness about firm-specific shocks; however, the firm manager cares most and wants to learn from the stock price mainly about systematic shocks in making investment decisions as he already has precise private information about firm-specific shocks. Consistent with the learning channel, we further find that a firm's investment becomes less responsive to its peers' stock prices and its operating performance improves after its ownership by ETFs increases. Overall, our study suggests the positive effect of ETFs on real efficiency, even though their net effect on the market efficiency of the underlyings is likely ambiguous.
Keywords
ETFs, Real Efficiency, Informational Efficiency, Managerial Learning
Discipline
Finance | Finance and Financial Management
Research Areas
Finance
Publication
China International Conference in Finance, Tianjin, China, 2018 July 10-13
Publisher
Taylor & Francis (Routledge): SSH Titles - no Open Select
City or Country
Tianjing
Citation
LI, Frank Weikai; LIU, Xuewen; and SUN, Chengzhu.
The real effects of exchange traded funds. (2018). China International Conference in Finance, Tianjin, China, 2018 July 10-13.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5949
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.