Information is a fundamental component of all financial transactions and markets, but it can arrive in multiple forms …. We define what is meant by hard and soft information and describe the relative advantages of each. Hard information is … quantitative, easy to store and transmit in impersonal ways, and its information content is independent of its collection. As …

There is a growing literature on the differential impact of soft' vs. hard' information on organizational structure and … behavior. This study is an attempt to empirically quantify the value of soft information, using a data-base on the market for … screenplays. Script quality is difficult to estimate without subjective evaluation. Therefore soft information should be an …

information collection affects equity analyst performance. Collection of hard information, proxied by office workday length, is … positively associated with the quantity and timeliness of analyst reports. Soft information collection, as proxied by propensity … star analyst. Both hard and soft information collection improve forecast precision, a causal result that we confirm using …