Information management and valuation: an experimental investigation

We explore the management of information and the response of market prices to such information. Sellers may be uncertain of dividends. We examine whether sellers anticipate buyers’ pricing behavior and whether buyers’ prices reflect correct inferences of the disclosure strategy of sellers. Buyers’ inferences and sellers’ anticipation require implicit Bayesian updating in solving for the equilibrium decision strategies of sellers and pricing behavior of buyers. Because of traditional problems in inducing Bayesian behavior we employ a manual technology. Our results show that if we split selling strategies into “information management” (sanitization), full disclosure, and randomization, then the information disclosed is consistent with sellers anticipating buyers’ pricing functional. Furthermore, prices themselves are sensitive to the information environment (full certainty, intermediate certainty, and low certainty) in which information asymmetry is manipulated.  2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. JEL classification: D800; D820