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Investor Behavior and the Benefits of Direct Stock Ownership
Author(s) -
BERNARD DARREN,
CADE NICOLE L.,
HODGE FRANK
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of accounting research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.767
H-Index - 141
eISSN - 1475-679X
pISSN - 0021-8456
DOI - 10.1111/1475-679x.12198
Subject(s) - stock (firearms) , univariate , business , ex ante , sample (material) , accounting , economics , financial economics , multivariate statistics , engineering , macroeconomics , mechanical engineering , statistics , chemistry , mathematics , chromatography
Using an experiment to rule out reverse causality, we examine whether a small investment in a company's stock leads investors to purchase more of the company's products and adopt other views and preferences that benefit the company. We preregister our research methods, hypotheses, and supplemental analyses via the Journal of Accounting Research ’s registration‐based editorial process. We find little evidence consistent with these hypotheses for the average investor in our sample using our planned univariate hypothesis tests, and planned Bayesian parameter estimation shows substantial downward belief revision for more optimistic ex ante expectations of the treatment effects. In planned supplemental analyses, however, we do find that the effects of ownership on product purchase behavior and on regulatory preferences are intuitively stronger for certain subgroups of investors—namely, for investors who are most likely to purchase the types of products offered by the company and for investors who are most likely to vote on political matters. The results contribute to our understanding of the benefits of direct stock ownership and are informative to public company managers and directors.