Firms' inflexibility in adjusting output prices to economic shocks exacerbates information asymmetry with respect to firms' profits, but public information on firms' cost structure mitigates this problem. We construct a novel form of public information from economic statistics disclosed by the government and find that such public information significantly reduces inflexible-price firms' bid–ask spreads, the probability of informed trading, and analyst forecast dispersions, but these results do not hold for flexible-price firms. Security analysts seek more cost-related information during conference calls about inflexible-price firms, but such a phenomenon is observed less frequently if a firm's input cost is more publicly observable. In addition, stock markets react more strongly to earning news announced by inflexible-price firms, consistent with our intuition.

中文翻译：

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价格刚性和公共信息的价值

企业在根据经济冲击调整产出价格方面缺乏灵活性，加剧了企业利润方面的信息不对称，但有关企业成本结构的公开信息缓解了这一问题。我们根据政府披露的经济统计数据构建了一种新形式的公共信息，发现这种公共信息显着降低了价格不灵活的公司的买卖价差、知情交易的概率和分析师预测的离散度，但这些结果并不成立对于灵活价格的公司。证券分析师在有关价格不灵活的公司的电话会议中寻求更多与成本相关的信息，但如果一家公司的投入成本更容易被公众观察到，那么这种现象就不太常见。此外，股票市场对价格不灵活的公司公布的盈利消息反应更为强烈，这与我们的直觉一致。