Is Human-Interaction-based Information Substitutable? Evidence from Lockdown
65 Pages Posted: 11 May 2021 Last revised: 15 Feb 2022
There are 2 versions of this paper
Is Human-Interaction-based Information Substitutable? Evidence from Lockdown
Is Human-Interaction-Based Information Substitutable? Evidence from Lockdown
Date Written: December 16, 2021
Abstract
We study information substitutability in the financial market through a quasi-natural experiment: the pandemic-triggered lockdown that has hampered people's physical interactions and hence the ability to collect, process, and transmit human-interaction-based information. Exploiting the cross-sectional and time-series variation of lockdown and its implications for proximate investment, we investigate how the difficulty of using human-interaction-based information in lockdown has prompted a switch to non-interaction-based information. We show that lockdown reduces fund investment in proximate stocks and generates a portfolio rebalancing toward distant stocks. Such rebalancing negatively impacts fund performance by reducing fund raw (excess) returns an additional 0.51% (0.19%) per month during lockdown, suggesting that human-interaction-based and non-interaction-based information is not easily substitutable. Last, we show that the edge of human-interaction-based information originates preeminently from physical contacts, primarily in cafés, restaurants, bars, and fitness centers, and that the virtual world based on Zoom/Skype/Teams cannot substitute for personal meetings in generating sufficient information.
Keywords: mutual fund; soft information; COVID-19; proximity investment; lockdown
JEL Classification: G12, G14, G23
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation