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Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 35 No. 11 2011

The effect of macroeconomic news on stock returns: New evidence from newspaper coverage

Gene Birz1,2; John R. Lott3

1 Morgan Stanley (United States) · 2 Binghamton University · 3 University of Maryland, College Park

Abstract

Previous literature has produced weak evidence to support the hypothesis that real economic news affects stock returns. This is, in part, attributed to the difficulty of measuring how investors interpret macroeconomic announcements in different economic environments. In this paper, we choose a different approach of measuring macroeconomic news to better estimate its effect on stock returns. Since newspaper stories provide an interpretation of the statistical releases, we choose newspaper stories as our measure of news. Our findings indicate that news about GDP and unemployment does affect stock returns.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2011.03.006
Volume
35
Issue
11
Pages
2791-2800
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

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