IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/joares/v46y2008i4p785-807.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Keynesian Beauty Contest, Accounting Disclosure, and Market Efficiency

Author

Listed:
  • PINGYANG GAO

Abstract

This paper examines the market efficiency consequences of accounting disclosure in the context of stock markets as a Keynesian beauty contest, an influential metaphor originally proposed by Keynes [1936] and recently formalized by Allen, Morris, and Shin [2006]. In such markets, public information plays an additional commonality role, biasing stock prices away from the consensus fundamental value toward public information. Despite this bias, I demonstrate that provisions of public information always drive stock prices closer to the fundamental value. Hence, as a main source of public information, accounting disclosure enhances market efficiency, and transparency should not be compromised on grounds of the Keynesian‐beauty‐contest effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Pingyang Gao, 2008. "Keynesian Beauty Contest, Accounting Disclosure, and Market Efficiency," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 785-807, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:46:y:2008:i:4:p:785-807
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-679X.2008.00295.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-679X.2008.00295.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1475-679X.2008.00295.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J, 1976. "On the Efficiency of Competitive Stock Markets Where Trades Have Diverse Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 573-585, May.
    2. Hirota, Shinichi & Sunder, Shyam, 2007. "Price bubbles sans dividend anchors: Evidence from laboratory stock markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1875-1909, June.
    3. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    4. Guillaume Plantin & Haresh Sapra & Hyun Song Shin, 2008. "Marking‐to‐Market: Panacea or Pandora's Box?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 435-460, May.
    5. Hirota, Shinichi & Sunder, Shyam, 2007. "Price bubbles sans dividend anchors: Evidence from laboratory stock markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1875-1909, June.
    6. Sushil Bikhchandani & David Hirshleifer & Ivo Welch, 1998. "Learning from the Behavior of Others: Conformity, Fads, and Informational Cascades," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 151-170, Summer.
    7. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    8. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2002. "Social Value of Public Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1521-1534, December.
    9. Brunnermeier, Markus K., 2001. "Asset Pricing under Asymmetric Information: Bubbles, Crashes, Technical Analysis, and Herding," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198296980.
    10. Beverly R. Walther, 2004. "Discussion of Information Transparency and Coordination Failure: Theory and Experiment," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 197-205, May.
    11. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1553-1583 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Diamond, Douglas W. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1981. "Information aggregation in a noisy rational expectations economy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 221-235, September.
    13. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1971. "The Private and Social Value of Information and the Reward to Inventive Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(4), pages 561-574, September.
    14. Regina M. Anctil & John Dickhaut & Chandra Kanodia & Brian Shapiro, 2004. "Information Transparency and Coordination Failure: Theory and Experiment," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 159-195, May.
    15. Grossman, Sanford J, 1995. "Dynamic Asset Allocation and the Informational Efficiency of Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 773-787, July.
    16. Admati, Anat R, 1985. "A Noisy Rational Expectations Equilibrium for Multi-asset Securities Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(3), pages 629-657, May.
    17. Franklin Allen & Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2006. "Beauty Contests and Iterated Expectations in Asset Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(3), pages 719-752.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tarek A. Hassan & Thomas M. Mertens, 2017. "The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1059-1103, April.
    2. Qi Chen & Zeqiong Huang & Yun Zhang, 2014. "The Effects of Public Information with Asymmetrically Informed Short‐Horizon Investors," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 635-669, June.
    3. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric Van Wincoop, 2006. "Can Information Heterogeneity Explain the Exchange Rate Determination Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 552-576, June.
    4. Gabriel Desgranges & Celine Rochon, 2008. "Conformism, Public News and Market Effciency," OFRC Working Papers Series 2008fe16, Oxford Financial Research Centre.
    5. Luca Bernardinelli & Paolo Guasoni & Eberhard Mayerhofer, 2022. "Informational efficiency and welfare," Mathematics and Financial Economics, Springer, volume 16, number 2, February.
    6. Beyer, Anne & Cohen, Daniel A. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Walther, Beverly R., 2010. "The financial reporting environment: Review of the recent literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 296-343, December.
    7. Gabriel Desgranges & Céline Rochon, 2013. "Conformism and public news," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(3), pages 1061-1090, April.
    8. Ruiz-Buforn, Alba & Camacho-Cuena, Eva & Morone, Andrea & Alfarano, Simone, 2021. "Overweighting of public information in financial markets: A lesson from the lab," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    9. Lunawat, Radhika, 2021. "Learning from trading activity in laboratory security markets with higher-order uncertainty," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    10. Nicolae Gârleanu & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2018. "Efficiently Inefficient Markets for Assets and Asset Management," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(4), pages 1663-1712, August.
    11. García, Diego & Urošević, Branko, 2013. "Noise and aggregation of information in large markets," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 526-549.
    12. Briana Chang & Harrison Hong, 2017. "Assignment of Stock Market Coverage," NBER Working Papers 23115, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Mäkinen, Taneli & Ohl, Björn, 2015. "Information acquisition and learning from prices over the business cycle," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 585-633.
    14. Kristoffer Nimark, 2009. "Speculative dynamics in the term structure of interest rates," Economics Working Papers 1194, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Sep 2012.
    15. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    16. Marquardt, Philipp & Noussair, Charles N & Weber, Martin, 2019. "Rational expectations in an experimental asset market with shocks to market trends," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 116-140.
    17. Francisco Barillas & Kristoffer Nimark, 2019. "Speculation and the Bond Market: An Empirical No-Arbitrage Framework," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(9), pages 4179-4203, September.
    18. Michele Berardi, 2021. "Learning from prices: information aggregation and accumulation in an asset market," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 45-77, March.
    19. Xue, Hao & Zheng, Ronghuo, 2021. "Word-of-mouth communication, noise-driven volatility, and public disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1).
    20. Georgy Chabakauri & Kathy Yuan & Konstantinos E Zachariadis, 2022. "Multi-asset Noisy Rational Expectations Equilibrium with Contingent Claims," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(5), pages 2445-2490.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K2 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law
    • M4 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting
    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:46:y:2008:i:4:p:785-807. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-8456 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.