Robust Corporate Signaling with Heterogeneous Beliefs

59 Pages Posted: 7 Jun 2021 Last revised: 4 Aug 2023

Date Written: May 30, 2022

Abstract

We study corporate signaling when a manager and their investors disagree about how the manager’s information affects firm value. We show that signaling with heterogenous beliefs generally requires strong informational assumptions. This motivates our study of robust signaling which remains effective without requiring the agents to agree on the informational environment. When beliefs are common knowledge, robust signaling is uninformative unless the beliefs of the manager and their investors are sufficiently similar. In contrast, when beliefs are private information, then robust signaling is entirely uninformative. These results cast doubt on the efficacy of corporate signaling with heterogeneous beliefs.

Keywords: Corporate Signaling, Beliefs, Robustness

JEL Classification: G30, D82

Suggested Citation

Rivera, Thomas, Robust Corporate Signaling with Heterogeneous Beliefs (May 30, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3857114 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3857114

Thomas Rivera (Contact Author)

McGill University ( email )

1001 Sherbrooke St W
Montreal, Quebec h3A 1G5

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