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Is There a Dark Side to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)? An Information Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Israeli, Doron

    (Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya)

  • Lee, Charles M. C.

    (Stanford University)

  • Sridharan, Suhas A.

    (UCLA)

Abstract

In a noisy rational expectations framework with costly information, some agents expend resources to become informed, and earn a return for their efforts by trading with the uninformed. Applying this insight, we examine the proposition that an increase in ETF ownership is accompanied by a decline in pricing efficiency for the underlying component securities. Our tests show an increase in ETF ownership is associated with: (1) higher trading costs (measured as bid-ask spreads and price impact of trades); (2) an increase in "stock return synchronicity" (measured as the co-movement of firm-level stock returns with general market and related-industry stock returns); (3) a decline in "future earnings response coefficients" (measured as the predictive power of current returns for future earnings), and (4) a decline in the number of analysts covering the firm. Collectively, our findings support the view that increased ETF ownership can lead to higher trading costs and lower benefits from information acquisition, a combination which results in less informative security prices for the component firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Israeli, Doron & Lee, Charles M. C. & Sridharan, Suhas A., 2015. "Is There a Dark Side to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)? An Information Perspective," Research Papers 3322, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:3322
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    Cited by:

    1. Itzhak Ben-David & Francesco A. Franzoni & Rabih Moussawi, 2016. "Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 16-64, Swiss Finance Institute.
    2. Tomas Williams, 2018. "Capital Inflows, Sovereign Debt and Bank Lending: Micro-Evidence from an Emerging Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(12), pages 4958-4994.
    3. Massa, Massimo & Cheng, Si & Zhang, Hong, 2017. "The Unexpected Activeness of Passive Investors: A World-Wide Analysis of ETFs," CEPR Discussion Papers 11988, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

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