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This paper aims to discuss whether the attention of investors to abnormalities can serve as a mechanism for the influence of online media coverage on earnings management.

Based on Baidu index data of China’s A-share listed companies between 2014 and 2018, this paper studies influencing mechanism of online media reports on earnings management from the perspective on abnormal investor attention.

The results show that internet media reports can impose pressure on managers of companies by inducing abnormal focus of the public on listed companies and further force the latter to generate more actions on the management of earnings. It is the abnormal rather than normal investor attention that mediates network media reports and earnings management.

This research enriches and refines the theory on influencing mechanism of media effects on earnings management and provides significant empirical evidence for future researches. Meanwhile, the conclusion of the research is of great practical importance for instructing listed firms dealing with media reports, guiding rational investment of investors and intensifying precision regulation of regulators.

By categorizing abnormal investor attention into active spontaneous abnormal attention which is not guided by media report and passive guided abnormal attention which is guided by media reports, the authors clarify the difference between the two categories. The result indicates that it is only the latter that is the influential mechanism of media report on earnings management.

This study aims to explore the asset pricing implications of attention allocation theories in the Indian stock market.

Investor attention is captured through investors' search behavior, the Google search volume index. Panel least square method is used in this study, and the research is performed at firm-level upon NSE100 constituent firms with 21,566 firm-week observations.

The authors find a significant increase in abnormal return following an increase in abnormal attention. Also, this effect is strengthened for smaller firms and firms with positive sentiments. Further, applying a geographic lens to the investigation, it is found that the attention impact is attributable to local investors. Finally, the study demonstrates that local attention-based portfolio formation and trading strategy, i.e. long in high abnormal local attention stocks and short in low abnormal local attention stocks, leads to a significant return premium.

This study reveals that behavioral factors like investor attention drive the Indian Stock Market. Also, the geography analysis shows that observing investors' behavior enables predicting the arrival of private information. Thus abnormal local attention can be a potential input factor for forecasting exercises and trading strategy formation, thereby aiding in exploiting profitable opportunities.

The study captures asset pricing implications of investor attention and explores the effect of firm size and sentiment on the attention–return relationship in an emerging economy, India. It also relates location proximity with investors' attention allocation and tests its implications on stock prices.

Media-effect refers to the phenomenon that stocks with no or low media coverage earn higher returns than stocks with high coverage. This paper aims to explore the existence of media-effect in China stock market and tests the two competing hypotheses explaining this phenomenon.

The authors construct a research sample based on a media-coverage event: the publications of lists of the most wealthy Chinese individuals; in addition, they identify the stocks of which listed firms are led by a controller who is recognized on the publicized lists. This paper uses event study methodology to test the existence of media effect in China A-share market. The authors employed propensity score matching (PSM) to construct a control group with same number of non-listed stocks. Then compared the returns of the two portfolios to test the risk premium hypothesis, and the abnormal trading volume and price reaction around the event date is explored to test the over-attention underperformance hypothesis.

Sampled stocks show significantly negative abnormal returns within the event period, but the matched control group formed by PSM shows no significant abnormal return, indicating that the risk premium hypothesis is not supported. Covered stocks show significantly magnified trading volume. The portfolio gains significant positive return before the event date but turns significantly negative afterward, which is consistent with the over-attention underperformance hypothesis.

This paper offers insights into media-effect in China stock market and provides empirical evidence explaining its existence.

Considering the role of analysts in disseminating information, the paper explains the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle of China's stock market. As the largest developing country, China's research can provide meaningful reference for the research of financial markets in other new countries.

From the perspective of behavior, establishing a direct link between individual investor attention and stock price overvaluation.

The authors find that there is a significant idiosyncratic volatility puzzle in China's stock market. Due to the role of mispricing, individual investor attention significantly enhances the idiosyncratic volatility effect, that is, as individual investor attention increases, the greater the idiosyncratic volatility, the lower the expected return. Attention can explain the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle in China's stock market. In addition, due to the role of information production and dissemination, securities analysts can reduce the degree of market information asymmetry and enhance the transparency of market information.

China is the second largest economy in the world, and few scholars analyze it from the perspective of investors' attention. The authors believe this paper has the potential in contributing to the academia.

This study aims to examine investor attention by exploring the trading behavior of investors in US-based exchange traded funds (ETFs) of countries active in the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cups.

The present study employs event study methodology to measure abnormal returns and excess trading volume of country-specific ETFs during six FIFA World Cups. The sample of ETFs includes 19 participating countries.

Consistent with investor behavior that might be explained by attention effect, the study finds that country-specific ETFs from participating countries do indeed behave differently during FIFA World Cups events. The authors find significant evidence of abnormal trading volume and, albeit weaker, abnormal returns during cups.

This study contributes to the literature on investor behavior, linking investor attention with salient sports events.

The purpose of the study is to examine whether analyst coverage responds to changes in investor information demand for a firm and to test whether certain investor or firm characteristics moderate this association.

The authors model analyst activeness (AA) as a function of institutional investors' information demand, proxied by news readership on Bloomberg terminals and retail investors' information demand, proxied by the Google Search Volume Index (GSVI). Additionally, the authors take several steps to mitigate concerns about reverse causality that may confound the findings.

Results suggest that analysts respond to information demand shocks, but partially revert their coverage after the demand shock subsides. Furthermore, the results suggest that analysts cater their coverage more towards institutional investors than to retail investors. Evidence also suggests that analysts are more responsive to investors interested in firms with tech stock characteristics. Finally, the authors find evidence that specialist analysts respond more to institutional investors while generalist analysts respond more to retail investors.

The authors are the first to empirically examine the extent to which analysts cater to investor information demand. This is a vital topic to study because analysts are one of the primary sources of information for market participants. Understanding an analyst's motivation for providing information will help to facilitate market efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically and empirically explore the effects of attention levels on individual investors' investment return.

By introducing the heterogeneous attention, the authors first expand the theoretical model of Barber and Odean. The authors use graphical analysis, univariate analysis, multiple regression analysis and construct a portfolio to carry out an empirical study.

The authors first find evidence in support of Barber and Odean's price pressure hypothesis. By theoretical and empirical study, the authors conclude that attention negatively affects individual investors' investment return.

By introducing the heterogeneous attention, the paper provides a theoretical basis for empirical study. Baidu abnormal search volume was used as a proxy for individual investors' attention, and analysts' neutral ratings were used to empirically verify the theoretical theorem.

We investigate whether limited investor attention is a factor in the effectiveness of institutional shareholder activism. Prior research has shown that an inability of market participants to allocate sufficient intellectual effort to the investment decision can have an impact on market price and volume behavior. We extend this research in an applied setting by considering the effectiveness of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) focus list, whose aim is to improve the performance and corporate governance of target firms. We find that the share price and volume response to being included in the focus list is a function of the investor attention in a stock, which in turn has an impact on the subsequent managerial response. This suggests that when attention is a scarce cognitive resource, the proactive exploitation of news signals can be an efficient activism strategy.

This study aims to examine the behaviour of institutional and retail investors in response to news about industry leaders (peer firms) and to determine its impact on the stock prices of other firms (focal firms) within the same industry.

The study investigates the impact of peer news on investor behaviour of Chinese A-shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2010 to 2019. The media coverage of industry leaders is sourced from prominent Chinese online financial outlets and the Chinese Financial Press. Support vector machine is applied to identify the positive, neutral and negative news within the articles. The study uses event study and logistic regression to examine the effects of peer news on focal firms’ investor behaviour.

The results show that both good and bad news about leaders cause peers’ stock prices to increase initially, but then reverse within one quarter. Further analysis reveals that when leaders’ shares receive positive news coverage, institutional investors tend to exert excessive abnormal buying pressure on peers’ shares, resulting in overreactions. Conversely, retail investors do not actively trade on peers on leaders’ news day due to limited attention. In addition, the study shows that short-selling constraint inhibits bad news from reflecting in the stock prices.

The study highlights differences in investor behaviour. The finding that institutional investors tend to overreact more to peer firms’ news when focal firms are smaller and have a lower frequency of information disclosure supports the salient theory. This is consistent with the previous framework that suggests overreaction is more pronounced when it is difficult to combine external sources of information to evaluate the focal firms. In contrast, retail investors do not engage in active trading on peers on leaders’ news day due to the limited attention theory.

This paper focuses on the influence of social, cultural and religious factors on investors' attention. In particular, the authors examined if the attention-grabbing mechanism works on Sundays, that is, if the Italians' Sunday activities and habits lead to a lower attention to second-hand financial news, compared to Saturdays.

The authors analyzed the market reaction to equivalent stale events published on the Saturday and Sunday editions of an Italian financial newspaper and conducted a standard event study on abnormal returns and abnormal volumes for Saturday and Sunday columns and a multivariate analysis on abnormal returns for columns reporting positive recommendations. As a robustness check, the authors performed a sentiment analysis of the columns and included this variable in the regression analysis, but sentiment proved to be not significant in the final model.

The study’s results confirmed that the attention-grabbing mechanism directed buying decisions, while had no influence on selling decisions. Furthermore, event study and multivariate analysis showed a significant lower market reaction to Sunday columns, supporting the study hypothesis of a Sunday investors' inattention which can be traced to cultural and/or religious factors since Sunday in Italy is a day devoted to family, entertainment and religious rituals.

The lower investors' attention on Sundays and the related influence of social, cultural and religious factors have implications for the timing of both corporate communications and financial advertising.

The authors’ paper provides an original contribution, on the empirical ground, to the attention-grabbing theory and to the growing theoretical literature in microeconomics that models attention.