Proxy For Attention Research Articles

Q-Group Research Proposal: In Search of Attention

Turnover, extreme returns, news and advertising expense are indirect proxies of investor attention. In contrast, we propose a direct measure of investor demand for attention -- active attention -- using search frequency in Google (SVI). In a sample of Russell 3000 stocks from 2004 to 2008, we find SVI to be correlated with but different from existing proxies of investor attention. In addition, SVI captures investor attention on a more timely basis. SVI allows us to shed new light on how retail investor attention affects the returns to IPO stocks and price momentum strategies. Using retail order execution in SEC Rule 11Ac1-5 reports, we establish a strong and direct link between SVI changes and trading by less sophisticated individual investors. Increased retail attention as measured by SVI during the IPO contributes to the large first-day return and long-run underperformance of IPO stocks. We also document stronger price momentum among stocks with higher levels of SVI, consistent with the explanation of momentum proposed by Daniel, Hirshleifer and Subrahmanyam (1998).

In Search of Attention

Turnover, extreme returns, news and advertising expense are indirect proxies of investor attention. In contrast, we propose a direct measure of investor demand for attention -- active attention -- using search frequency in Google (SVI). In a sample of Russell 3000 stocks from 2004 to 2008, we find SVI to be correlated with but different from existing proxies of investor attention. In addition, SVI captures investor attention on a more timely basis. SVI allows us to shed new light on how retail investor attention affects the returns to IPO stocks and price momentum strategies. Using retail order execution in SEC Rule 11Ac1-5 reports, we establish a strong and direct link between SVI changes and trading by less sophisticated individual investors. Increased retail attention as measured by SVI during the IPO contributes to the large first-day return and long-run underperformance of IPO stocks. We also document stronger price momentum among stocks with higher levels of SVI, consistent with the explanation of momentum proposed by Daniel, Hirshleifer and Subrahmanyam (1998).

One MH Care Racial Disparity Seems to Be Disappearing

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessOne MH Care Racial Disparity Seems to Be DisappearingMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:20 Mar 2009https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.44.6.0017The difference in outpatient psychiatric office visit duration for white people and African Americans—a proxy for quality of care—appears to have narrowed dramatically in recent years.The average duration of outpatient visits by African Americans between 2001 and 2006—adjusted to account for potentially confounding patient, psychiatrist, and practice characteristics—was 3.5 minutes shorter than visits by white people, according to a report in the February Archives of General Psychiatry.But that disparity is largely due to the substantial gap of 7.4 minutes that existed in the early years of the period, 2001 to 2004. Between 2004 and 2006 the gap virtually disappeared, dropping to 0.1 minute.The analysis controlled for difference in duration of visits for psychotherapy and medication management, so that the racial difference in visit duration during the five-year period—as well as its significant narrowing in the last three years of the study period—was not mediated by psychotherapy, use of medication, or changes in these variables on the part of either racial group.“Office visit duration can be thought of as a proxy for clinical attention and therefore serves as a measure of quality of care,” said study author Marc Olfson, M.D., a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. “It's heartening, because it seems the differences between the races [with regard to this variable] have all but disappeared in recent years. And that change is not attributable to changes in rates of psychotherapy or medication management.”Nor can the closing of the gap in visit duration be explained by an overall decrease in visit length from the 2001-2003 period to the 2003-2006 period. In the first three years, the average adjusted length of an office visit for white people was 32.9 minutes; in the latter half of the study period, that figure dropped only slightly to 32.5 minutes.But the average length of visits for African Americans rose from 25.5 minutes in the first three years to 32.4 minutes in the later half of the study period.“We are left with a puzzle,” said Olfson. “I can only speculate that perhaps there really have been recent changes in public attitudes with people, including psychiatrists, becoming more comfortable talking across racial groups about mental health problems.”He noted that the study analyzes a period when racial disparities in access to and quality of care became a subject of national focus. “It's also true that there has been a lot of attention devoted to this general topic and a greater public awareness of threats to the quality of health care posed by racial disparities,” he said. “The narrowing of the racial gap in visit duration in recent years is a welcome development, but it's not one that we can confidently assign to any one particular cause.”Data for the study were drawn from the 2001-2006 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, a probability sample survey of office-based physicians in the United States conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.Physicians were instructed to fill out a patient record form for each sampled visit. The number of forms completed each year by respondent psychiatrists ranged from a low of 1,469 in 2003 to a high of 1,896 in 2004. A total of 7,094 office visits were made by white patients, and 504 visits were made by African-American patients.The unadjusted mean duration of psychiatric outpatient visits by African-American patients over the entire study period was 4.4 minutes shorter than that of white patients and 3.5 minutes shorter after controlling for potential confounding variables.Interestingly, a significant race-related difference in visit duration was evident among visits financed by Medicare but not other sources of payment. Olfson noted that African Americans are much less likely to have private supplemental insurance to cover charges above Medicare-approved amounts.“It may be that additional reimbursement from supplemental insurance contributes to longer visits,” he told Psychiatric News.“ It's one area where there are persisting differences.”An abstract of “Racial Differences in Visit Duration of Outpatient Psychiatric Visits” is posted at<http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/66/2/214>.▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Advertising, Attention, and Stock Returns

This paper studies the effect of advertising on stock returns both in the short run and in the long run. We find that a greater amount of advertising is associated with a larger stock return in the advertising year but a smaller stock return in the year subsequent to the advertising year, even after we control for other price predictors, such as size, book-to-market, and momentum. We conjecture that this advertising effect on stock returns is due to the effect of advertising on attention. Advertising could help a firm attract investors' attention. Stock price increases in the adverting year due to the attracted attention, but decreases in the subsequent year as the attracted attention wears out over time in the long run. We test this investor attention hypothesis using trading volume and the number of financial analysts covering to proxy for investors' attention on the firm's stock. We document five consistent findings. First, advertising increases a firm's visibility among investors in the advertising year. Second, an increased level of attention is associated with a larger contemporary stock return and a smaller future stock return. Third, the effect of advertising on stock returns is stronger in firms with more visibility in the advertising year. In particular, when a high advertising firm attracts more attention in the stock market, the stock return of the high advertising firm increases to a larger degree in the contemporary adverting year and decreases to a larger degree in the subsequent years. However, the stock return of such a high advertising firm decreases to a smaller degree if the attention attracted in the advertising year persists subsequent to the advertising year. Fourth, the effect of advertising on future stock returns is stronger if investors face a larger cost of arbitrage. Finally, we also find that the advertising effect is stronger for small firms, value firms, and firms with poor ex-ante stock performance or poor ex-ante operating performance.

Investor Inattention and the Underreaction to Stock Recommendations

Investors’ reaction to stock recommendations is often incomplete so that there is a predictable post-recommendation drift. I investigate investor inattention as a plausible explanation for this drift by using prior turnover as a proxy for attention. I find that low attention stocks react less to stock recommendations than high attention stocks around the three-day event window. Subsequently, the recommendation drift of firms with low attention is more than double in magnitude when compared to firms with high attention. Similar conclusions are reached with alternative proxies for attention. The evidence supports investor inattention as a source of the stock recommendation drift.

Comparing temporal order judgments and choice reaction time tasks as indices of exogenous spatial cuing

Attentional disorders are common in individuals with neurological or psychiatric conditions and impact on recovery and outcome. Thus, it is critical to develop theory-based measures of attentional function to understand potential mechanisms underlying the disorder and to evaluate the effect of intervention. The present study compared two alternative methods to measure the effects of attentional cuing that could be used in populations of individuals who may not be able to make manual responses normally or may show overall slowing in responses. Spatial attention was measured with speeded and unspeeded methods using either manual or voice responses in two standard attention paradigms: the cued target discrimination reaction time (RT) paradigm and the unspeeded temporal order judgment (TOJ) task. The comparison of speeded and unspeeded tasks specifically addresses the concern about interpreting RT differences between cued and uncued trials (taken as a proxy for attention) in the context of drastically different baseline RTs. We found significant cuing effects for both tasks (speeded RT and untimed TOJ) and both response types (vocal and manual) giving clinicians and researchers alternative methods with which to measure the effects of attention in different populations who may not be able to perform the standard speeded RT task.

Financial Contagion through Attention Reallocation: An Empirical Analysis

This paper provides suggestive evidence of financial contagion between regions by fluctuations in international investors' attention allocation. Using Financial Times news stories about Thailand as a proxy for attention allocated to Southeast Asia, we find that the increase in uncertainty about Southeast Asian stock markets between January of 1997 and July of 1998 was associated with a higher attention allocated to this region. We also find that one more news story about Thailand in the Financial Times was statistically associated with a 6% (5%) increase in the stock market volatility of Brazil (Chile). This finding is consistent with financial contagion through attention reallocation of international investors.

Terrorism and the media: An empirical analysis

The conventional wisdom is that media attention causes terrorism, yet empirical investigation of this widely held belief has been sparse. This research uses a terrorism micro data set with media variables to explore the link between terrorism and media attention. Using coverage of terrorist incidents in the New York Times as a proxy for media attention, we determine which specific characteristics of terrorist events attract notice by the media and measure the effects that these characteristics have on media coverage. We also investigate whether media coverage empirically causes terrorism. Results indicate that media attention does not Granger cause terrorism.