Private information and investment-q sensitivity: Evidence from new products

Abstract

This study shows that a decline in investment efficiency due to information asymmetry may not necessarily devalue a firm but may enhance its value instead. Firms base their investment decisions on both public and private information. However, effectively transmitting private information to investors in a competitive market is quite challenging, as it leads to stock prices inadequately reflecting a firm’s true value. Simultaneously, firms must invest to achieve their business objectives, which results in a deviation between a firm’s actual investment level and the market’s expected investment level, thereby reducing investment-q sensitivity. However, this deviation does not imply a waste of societal resources; instead, it improves a firm’s core competitiveness in the product market. We consider the future launch of new products as a proxy for firm private information. We find that (1) private information is negatively associated with investment-q sensitivity, and that the greater the sales of the new product, the lower the investment-q sensitivity; (2) the negative effect is more pronounced for firms with higher revenue volatility and ownership concentration than for those with lower revenue volatility and ownership concentration. This study helps us to further understand how to evaluate firm investment efficiency from the perspective of private information and provides empirical evidence of the costs of the new product launch process.