Home-Country Media Slant and Equity Prices

Abstract

We study the relation between national newspaper reporting and investor beliefs in the context of the automotive industry across the U.S., Germany, and Japan. Using large-scale hand-coded media data, we show that news about companies is systematically more positive in companies’ home countries than abroad. Home-country media slant increases substantially during bad times for companies. Abnormally high home-media news tone predicts low monthly stock returns. Daily cross-country difference in news tone predicts price deviations of cross-listed stocks. The effects are strongest when news tends to confirm investor prior beliefs and weakest when investors are likely distracted by sports events.

Keywords: media slant, media bias, textual analysis, investor sentiment, cross-listed stocks, confirmatory bias

JEL Classification: L82, D23, F23