← Search

American Economic Review Vol. 96 No. 2 2006

Investor Sentiment and Corporate Finance: Micro and Macro

Owen A. Lamont1; Jeremy C. Stein2

1 School of Management, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520. · 2 Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Abstract

We document that net equity issuance is considerably more sensitive to aggregate stock returns and Q's than to firm-level stock returns and Q's. Very similar patterns also emerge when we look at merger activity. In light of earlier work (Campbell 1991, Vuolteenaho 2002) which finds that aggregate stock returns are less informative about future cashflows than are firm-level stock returns--and thus, potentially more strongly influenced by investor sentiment--these results suggest that both equity issuance and mergers are to a significant extent driven by market-timing considerations, as opposed to by purely fundamental factors.

DOI
10.1257/000282806777212143
Volume
96
Issue
2
Pages
147-151
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite