COUNTRY-SPECIFIC INVESTOR ATTENTION AND ADR MISPRICING

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of country-specific investor attention on ADR mispricing. Investor attention is measured by the amount of traffic a country’s Wikipedia profile page receives. A two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression is employed to examine the relationship between investor attention and ADR mispricing, but also to mitigate endogeneity between the two variables of interest. We use the FIFA World Ranking (country soccer ranking) and the number of UNESCO heritage sites as instruments for investor attention; given the unlikelihood that either of those variables can be caused by ADR mispricing. Our results show that lower levels of investor attention lead to higher ADR mispricing, therefore leading to a greater divergence of the law of one price for the sample of ADRs. The results are robust across various model specifications and to well-known determinants of mispricing such as turnover, stock prices, exchange rates, and market capitalization.