The Internet is widely used by listed companies to manage investor relations. Since January 2007, the French Financial Authority has required companies listed on Euronext-Paris to disclose all mandatory financial information via the Internet in order to enhance information transparency. This paper examines the impact of Internet-based disclosure on the French stock market by analyzing the relationship between information asymmetry and Internet disclosure practices. Extending previous studies on Web-based disclosure, a checklist of 40 items is developed to evaluate the level of Internet-based voluntary disclosure. Measuring information asymmetry by the spread and the probability of informed trading, we show that greater Web-based disclosure lowers information asymmetry in the French financial market.

We introduce nudges in order to incite investors to choose Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds instead of traditional funds. We have set up two online experiments with a total of 713 US retail investors, using three types of nudges to elicit their effects on investors’ SRI investments level: making SRI the default investment, introducing a SRI explanation message, and priming ethical values by displaying shocking images. Making SRI the default option is the most efficient nudge to influence investors towards SRI. Its effect is twofold. First, around 50% of investors do not opt-out of the default allocation. Second, even investors who opt-out of the default allocation invest more in SRI than those in the control group, an effect that appears driven by anchoring. Although investors subjected to both priming and message content marginally increase their SRI investment, priming or message content in isolation appears to have a non-significant influence. For choice architects who want to steer retail investors towards SRI funds, making them the default option appears to be the most powerful nudge.

This paper empirically analyses trades and quotes around the times of 37 earnings announcements in the Paris Bourse. We find that trading volume is larger on announcement days, spreads are wider after announcements, and the permanent positive (resp. negative) price impact of purchases (sales) is greater around announcements. While the findings pertaining to the spread and the permanent impact of trades are consistent with the view that earnings announcements correspond to an increase in information asymmetries, the result that trading volume is larger suggests that other effects are at work.