Events

Prof. Jeffrey Ng
Professor in Accounting
School of Accounting and Finance
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

We propose that a firm can improve its investment efficiency when its managers and investors learn from peers’ investment plans, as announced in capex forecasts. The managerial learning channel suggests that a firm’s managers can learn from peers’ capex forecasts, leading to more efficient investment decisions for the managers’ own firms. The investor learning channel suggests that capital providers can learn from peers’ capex forecasts so they can better fund and monitor the firm. We find that firms invest more efficiently when peers provide capex forecasts. Relying on time-series variations among peers and cross-sectional variations in capex forecast information, we show that the effect of peers’ capex forecasts is likely causal. Further cross-sectional analyses provide evidence supporting both the managerial learning channel and investor learning channel. Finally, we document that firms’ product market share increases when peers provide capex forecasts, suggesting that peers incur proprietary costs from providing capex forecasts. Overall, this paper offers new insight into how firms improve their investment decisions by learning from peer disclosure.