The Market Pricing of Information Risk: From the Perspective of the Generating and Utilizing of Information

Abstract

Generating and utilizing are the two sources of the information risk, reflecting the quality of financial reporting and investors’ information interpreting ability respectively. Using accrual quality to represent the financial reporting quality and the earnings transparency to represent investors’ information interpreting ability, we examine the correlation among them. By combining the generating and utilizing steps of information, we construct a two-dimensional information risk factor, which equals the excess return of portfolios in high-risk areas subtract that in low-risk areas. Then, taking the Fama-MacBeth two-stage cross-sectional regression procedure, we test whether the information risk factor is a pricing factor with individual stocks and industry portfolios respectively, and the empirical results support the point that information risk is priced by market.