Information: Hard and Soft

José María Liberti and Mitchell A Petersen

The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, 2019, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-41

Abstract: Information, which can arrive in multiple forms, is a fundamental component of all financial transactions and markets. We define hard and soft information and describe the relative advantages of each. Hard information is quantitative, is easy to store, and can be transmitted in impersonal ways. Its information content is independent of its collection. As technology changes, the way we collect, process, and communicate information, it changes the structure of markets, the design of financial intermediaries, and the incentives to use or misuse information. We survey the literature to understand how information type influences the continued evolution of financial markets and institutions.Received October 25, 2016; editorial decision September 6, 2018 by Editor Efraim Benmelech.

Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (144)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rcfs/cfy009 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:rcorpf:v:8:y:2019:i:1:p:1-41.

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Corporate Finance Studies is currently edited by Andrew Ellul

More articles in The Review of Corporate Finance Studies from Society for Financial Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().