Do insiders trade on innovation?
Ibrahim Bostan and
G. Mujtaba Mian
Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, 2023, vol. 19, issue 1
Abstract:
We find that pure insider share purchases—which we define as insider purchases over two successive years without any corresponding sales—are a strong predictor of a firm’s patent applications. The predictability increases with the quality of the patent: Applications for the highest-quality, breakthrough patents increase by 21% in the year following pure insider purchases in our sample. These purchases are associated with large abnormal stock returns of 1.1% per month (14% annualized) over the subsequent three-year period. We also document that stock price responds less to the subsequent announcement of the grant of patent if the application for the patent has been preceded by pure insider purchases, consistent with the idea that insider purchases reveal information about future firm innovation. Our evidence has implications for understanding insider trading within technology companies that have become a dominant feature of US stock markets in recent decades.
Keywords: Insider trading; Innovation; Abnormal stock returns; Patents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G14 G30 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1815566922000455
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jocaae:v:19:y:2023:i:1:s1815566922000455
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcae.2022.100350
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics is currently edited by Agnes C.S. Cheng, P. Clarkson, F.A. Gul, Zoltan Matolcsy, Dan Simunic and Ben Srinidhi
More articles in Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().