Leveling the playing field between large and small institutions: Evidence from the SEC’s XBRL mandate

• Main Authors: BHATTACHARYA, Nilabhra, CHO, Young Jun, KIM, Jae B.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: XBRL; Analysts; Institutions; Information Asymmetry; Accounting; Corporate Finance; Finance and Financial Management
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/1770; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soa_research/article/2797/viewcontent/Leveling_Playing_Field_XBRL_2018_sv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We investigate how XBRL adoption affects smaller institutions’ access to financial statement information relative to their larger counterparts. We examine three aspects of trading responsiveness: abnormal trading volume, response speed to 10-K information, and decision to trade immediately following the 10-K filing. With regard to all three aspects of trading responsiveness, we find that small institutions’ responsiveness to 10-K news increases significantly more relative to the change experienced by large institutions from the pre- to post-XBRL periods. We further document that small institutions’ stock picking skills in the 10-K filing period increase more compared to those of large institutions following the regulation. Our results are robust to a battery of falsification and sensitivity tests. Collectively, our results suggest that the informational playing field between small and large institutions has become more even following the SEC’s XBRL mandate.