The differential information hypothesis advanced by Atiase (1980) states that information production and dissemination by private parties for the purpose of identifying mispriced securities is an increasing function of firm size. This study examines two corollaries of that hypothesis. First, security prices of large firms anticipate accounting earnings earlier than security prices of small firms. Second, for a given level of ‘unexpected’ earnings, the cumulative abnormal returns of small firms exceed those of large firms. The results are generally consistent with Atiase's hypothesis.

We assess potential information transfers by examining the association between the earnings announcements of early and late announcers in an industry. Our earnings prediction models are statistically significant much more frequently than would be expected by chance. The models suggest potential positive information transfers on average, but there is substantial cross-industry variation in the strength of this relation. We find that the greatest price reactions by nonannouncers to same-industry earnings announcements occur in industries with the greatest earnings comovement