ABSTRACT We examine the influence of mobile communication on local information flow and local investor activity using the enforcement of statewide distracted driving restrictions, which are exogenous events that constrain mobile communication while driving. By restricting mobile communication across a potentially sizable set of local individuals, these restrictions could inhibit local information flow and, in turn, the market activity of stocks headquartered in enforcement states. We first document a decline in Google search activity for local stocks when restrictions take effect, suggesting that constraints on mobile communication significantly affect individuals’ information search activity. We further find significant declines in local trading volume when restrictions are enforced. This drop in liquidity is (1) attenuated when laws provide substitutive means of mobile communication and (2) magnified when locals have long car commutes and when their daily commutes overlap with regular exchange hours. Moreover, trading volume suffers the most for local stocks with lower institutional ownership, less analyst coverage, and more intangible information. Additional analyses show lower intraday volume during local commute times when mobile connectivity is constrained. Together, our results suggest that local information and local investors matter in stock markets and that mobile communication is an important mechanism through which these elements operate to affect liquidity and price discovery.

ABSTRACT We show that managers have a propensity to disproportionately report total revenues just above base‐ten thresholds (e.g., 10 million, 30 million, 1 billion) and examine motives for and consequences of this behavior. Focusing on base‐ten thresholds in revenues is important because, despite being unusually prevalent in revenue targets set in executive compensation contracts, analyst forecasts, and management forecasts, they have not been previously explored. We also show that pressure to beat these targets provides one explanation for the base‐ten bias in reported revenues. However, these incentive effects do not offer a complete explanation because base‐ten threshold‐beating is observed even in the absence of these explicit targets. We further find that when firms beat a base‐ten threshold for the first time, they experience increases in news coverage, institutional ownership, liquidity, and analyst following, even after controlling for whether they have beaten other common benchmarks. These results suggest that managers also beat base‐ten thresholds in order to increase their firms' overall visibility. Overall, we show that a preference for base‐ten numbers, which have no inherent economic meaning, has a measurable effect on the actions of market participants. These results open the door to a new range of managerial targets previously unexplored.

Media as a whole has been shown to play an important role as an information source, information intermediary, and monitor of public firms, but much less is known about whether local newspapers play a similar role. We attempt to shed light on this issue, and we investigate if and how firms respond to changes in the local newspaper industry, where closures and layoffs have become the norm. Compared to a sample of matched control firms, we find that following newspaper closures and large industry layoffs, nearby public companies boost dividend payouts. This result follows from prior research suggesting that investors pressure managers to increase dividends in response to growing agency problems. Cross-sectional analyses confirm that our results are driven by geographically-concentrated firms that rely more heavily on local newspapers as a monitor and information source. Our findings suggest that local newspapers play an important role as an information intermediary and monitor of public firms, and that the disappearance of local newspapers exacerbates agency problems in nearby firms that tend to be remedied by higher dividends.