The Learning Hypothesis revisited: A discussion of Sani, Shroff and White (2023)

While Sani, Shroff and White (2023) examine a plausibly exogenous shock to the information acquisition landscape that arguably changes informed traders’ incentives to generate private information without the focal firm changing its disclosure policy, the causal chain underlying their analyses shares the implicit assumptions employed in the extant empirical literature that tests the Learning Hypothesis. Thus, the focus of our discussion is to make explicit the implicit assumptions and highlight the resulting challenges faced by authors who wish to interpret Investment Sensitivity to Price as evidence of managerial learning. In the end, we suggest future research work to extend our understanding by exploring in greater detail and more directly the What and the How managers learn from outsiders. •Fresh perspective on the Learning Hypothesis.•How and what do managers actually learn by observing stock prices?•The Causal Chain and implicit assumptions made explicit.