Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/250746 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
CFR Working Paper No. 21-10
Publisher: 
University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), Cologne
Abstract: 
Mobile internet devices reduce trading frictions and information search costs for investors, but also introduce attention-competing activities,such as social networking. We use exogenous nationwide and city-level outages of the Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) to investigate the effect of mobile internet technology on investors'information-gathering vs. attention-diverting activities. We find that trading volume and trading frequency surge by about 5% on days when mobile internet systems go dark, consistent with a greater role for devices (when not dark) in diverting the limited attention of investors away from information-gathering and trading - even when they are used by presumably more sophisticated investors.
Subjects: 
mobile technology
investor activity
stock market liquidity
limited attention
distraction
JEL: 
D83
G12
G14
L86
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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