IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v111y2014i1p137-157.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investment busts, reputation, and the temptation to blend in with the crowd

Author

Listed:
  • Grenadier, Steven R.
  • Malenko, Andrey
  • Strebulaev, Ilya A.

Abstract

We provide a real-options model of an industry in which agents time abandonment of their projects in an effort to protect their reputations. Agents delay abandonment attempting to signal quality. When a public common shock forces abandonment of a small fraction of projects irrespective of agents' quality, many agents abandon their projects strategically even if they are unaffected by the shock. Such “blending in with the crowd” effect creates an additional incentive to delay abandonment ahead of the shock, leading to accumulation of “living dead” projects, which further amplifies the shock. The potential for moderate public common shocks often improves agents' values.

Suggested Citation

  • Grenadier, Steven R. & Malenko, Andrey & Strebulaev, Ilya A., 2014. "Investment busts, reputation, and the temptation to blend in with the crowd," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 137-157.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:111:y:2014:i:1:p:137-157
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2013.09.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X13002481
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfineco.2013.09.002?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gustavo Manso, 2011. "Motivating Innovation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(5), pages 1823-1860, October.
    2. Ramey, Garey, 1996. "D1 Signaling Equilibria with Multiple Signals and a Continuum of Types," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 508-531, May.
    3. Dirk Bergemann & Ulrigh Hege, 2005. "The Financing of Innovation: Learning and Stopping," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(4), pages 719-752, Winter.
    4. Raghuram G. Rajan, 1994. "Why Bank Credit Policies Fluctuate: A Theory and Some Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 399-441.
    5. Cho, In-Koo & Sobel, Joel, 1990. "Strategic stability and uniqueness in signaling games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 381-413, April.
    6. Brendan Daley & Brett Green, 2012. "Waiting for News in the Market for Lemons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(4), pages 1433-1504, July.
    7. Dye, Ra, 1985. "Disclosure Of Nonproprietary Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 123-145.
    8. Viral V. Acharya & Peter DeMarzo & Ilan Kremer, 2011. "Endogenous Information Flows and the Clustering of Announcements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 2955-2979, December.
    9. Korajczyk, Robert A. & Lucas, Deborah J. & McDonald, Robert L., 1992. "Equity Issues with Time-Varying Asymmetric Information," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 397-417, September.
    10. Steven R. Grenadier & Andrey Malenko, 2011. "Real Options Signaling Games with Applications to Corporate Finance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(12), pages 3993-4036.
    11. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2013. "The Determinants of Attitudes toward Strategic Default on Mortgages," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(4), pages 1473-1515, August.
    12. S. P. Kothari & Susan Shu & Peter D. Wysocki, 2009. "Do Managers Withhold Bad News?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 241-276, March.
    13. William Fuchs & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2019. "Costs and benefits of dynamic trading in a lemons market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 33, pages 105-127, July.
    14. Dumas, Bernard, 1991. "Super contact and related optimality conditions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 675-685, October.
    15. Boot, Arnoud W A, 1992. "Why Hang on to Losers? Divestitures and Takeovers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1401-1423, September.
    16. Jung, Wo & Kwon, Yk, 1988. "Disclosure When The Market Is Unsure Of Information Endowment Of Managers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 146-153.
    17. Gregory S. Miller, 2002. "Earnings Performance and Discretionary Disclosure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 173-204, March.
    18. Bergemann, Dirk & Hege, Ulrich, 1998. "Venture capital financing, moral hazard, and learning," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(6-8), pages 703-735, August.
    19. Ji-Woong Chung & Berk A. Sensoy & Léa Stern & Michael S. Weisbach, 2012. "Pay for Performance from Future Fund Flows: The Case of Private Equity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(11), pages 3259-3304.
    20. Mailath, George J, 1987. "Incentive Compatibility in Signaling Games with a Continuum of Types," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1349-1365, November.
    21. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    22. Bart M. Lambrecht & Stewart C. Myers, 2007. "A Theory of Takeovers and Disinvestment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(2), pages 809-845, April.
    23. Brennan, Michael J & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 1985. "Evaluating Natural Resource Investments," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(2), pages 135-157, April.
    24. Lambrecht, Bart M, 2001. "The Impact of Debt Financing on Entry and Exit in a Duopoly," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(3), pages 765-804.
    25. Pablo Kurlat, 2013. "Lemons Markets and the Transmission of Aggregate Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1463-1489, June.
    26. Gennotte, Gerard & Trueman, Brett, 1996. "The Strategic Timing of Corporate Disclosures," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(2), pages 665-690.
    27. Morellec, Erwan & Schürhoff, Norman, 2011. "Corporate investment and financing under asymmetric information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 262-288, February.
    28. Arkes, Hal R. & Blumer, Catherine, 1985. "The psychology of sunk cost," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 124-140, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yunzhi Hu & Felipe Varas, 2021. "A Theory of Zombie Lending," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(4), pages 1813-1867, August.
    2. Alibeiki, Hedayat & Lotfaliei, Babak, 2022. "To expand and to abandon: Real options under asset variance risk premium," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 300(2), pages 771-787.
    3. Noh, Joonki & Zhou, Dexin, 2022. "Executives’ Blaming external factors and market reactions: Evidence from earnings conference calls," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).

    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. Steven Grenadier & Andrey Malenko & Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2012. "Investment Busts, Reputation, and the Temptation to Blend in with the Crowd," NBER Working Papers 17945, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Mayer, Simon, 2022. "Financing breakthroughs under failure risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 807-848.
    3. Rahul Menon, 2020. "Voluntary Disclosures when There Is an Option to Delay Disclosure," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 829-856, June.
    4. Mikhail Drugov & Rocco Macchiavello, 2014. "Financing Experimentation," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 315-349, February.
    5. Viral V. Acharya & Peter DeMarzo & Ilan Kremer, 2011. "Endogenous Information Flows and the Clustering of Announcements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 2955-2979, December.
    6. Seo, Hojun, 2021. "Peer effects in corporate disclosure decisions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1).
    7. Nishihara, Michi & Shibata, Takashi, 2018. "Dynamic bankruptcy procedure with asymmetric information between insiders and outsiders," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 118-137.
    8. Ali, Ashiq & Klasa, Sandy & Yeung, Eric, 2014. "Industry concentration and corporate disclosure policy," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 240-264.
    9. Aghamolla, Cyrus & An, Byeong-Je, 2021. "Voluntary disclosure with evolving news," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 21-53.
    10. Marina Halac & Ilan Kremer, 2020. "Experimenting with Career Concerns," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 260-288, February.
    11. Indraneel Chakraborty & Michael Ewens, 2018. "Managing Performance Signals Through Delay: Evidence from Venture Capital," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 2875-2900, June.
    12. Chia-Hui Chen & Junichiro Ishida, 2017. "Rewarding Mediocrity? Optimal Regulation of R&D Markets with Reputation Concerns," ISER Discussion Paper 0994, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    13. Athanasakou, Vasiliki E. & Strong, Norman C & Walker, Martin, 2014. "The relative concentration of bad versus good news flows," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 60139, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Kolb, Aaron M., 2019. "Strategic real options," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 344-383.
    15. Strebulaev, Ilya A. & Whited, Toni M., 2012. "Dynamic Models and Structural Estimation in Corporate Finance," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 6(1–2), pages 1-163, November.
    16. Jeon, Haejun, 2019. "Patent protection and R&D subsidy under asymmetric information," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 332-354.
    17. Aleksei Smirnov & Egor Starkov, 2022. "Bad News Turned Good: Reversal under Censorship," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 506-560, May.
    18. Matthew J. Bloomfield, 2021. "The Asymmetric Effect of Reporting Flexibility on Priced Risk," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 867-910, June.
    19. Bertomeu, Jeremy & Marinovic, Iván & Terry, Stephen J. & Varas, Felipe, 2022. "The dynamics of concealment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 227-246.
    20. Daley, Brendan & Green, Brett, 2014. "Market signaling with grades," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 114-145.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Abandonment; Real options; Signaling; Asymmetric information; Reputation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation

    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:eee:jfinec:v:111:y:2014:i:1:p:137-157. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    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.