In this study, we develop and test the hypothesis that because of opacity, the stock prices of financial firms will cluster on round fractions more than the stock prices of non-financial firms. Indeed, we find that the stock prices of opaque financial firms round on nickels and quarters more than the stock prices of less opaque non-financial firms. These results are robust to a battery of robustness tests that include measuring clustering at different frequencies, different econometric specifications, and different matched sample techniques. To draw stronger causal inferences, we use the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act as an exogenous shock to the level of transparency in the financial services sector. We find that price clustering decreases more for financial firms than for non-financial firms during the post-SOX regulation period. We also show that, relative to less opaque financial firms, those financial firms that are more opaque experienced the greatest decline in price clustering during the post-SOX period.

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公司不透明与股价聚集：以金融中介为例

在这项研究中，我们开发并检验了一个假设，即由于不透明，金融公司的股票价格将比非金融公司的股票价格更集中在整数部分。事实上，我们发现不透明金融公司的股票价格比不透明的非金融公司的股票价格更高。这些结果对于一系列稳健性测试来说是稳健的，这些测试包括在不同频率、不同计量经济学规范和不同匹配样本技术下测量聚类。为了得出更有力的因果推断，我们将萨班斯-奥克斯利法案 (SOX) 的通过作为对金融服务业透明度水平的外生冲击。我们发现，在后 SOX 监管期间，金融公司的价格集群比非金融公司下降得更多。