Abstract: Stock names are regarded as the public identity cards of the listed companies, so it is worth noticing how it can affect investors’ behavior and assets pricing. Based on the theory of investors’“limited attention”, this paper takes advantage of the exogenous shocking event of the release of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area(GBA) planning to testthe impact of the “place name effect”of stock names on the response of the markets of listed companies’stocks with the event research method. The findings show that when facing external macro-regional good news, investors would have irrational and selective attention behaviors, which is specifically reflected in the stronger response of the stock markets with relevant geographic information in the stock names. This confirms the theory of investors’ limited attention. The results of further consideration of the influence of corporate cross-section differences reveal that the higher the corporate growth, the more the number of analysts tracking, the higher the proportion of institutional investors’ shareholding, the more effectively reducing of the investors’ behaviors of limited attention. Meanwhile, compared with the investors from different places, the local investors have weaker limited attention, and their investment decisions are more rational. Thus, the investors should reasonably evaluate the market values of the listed companies, make rational investments, and restrain the unreasonable investment behaviors resulted from the place name effect.

Key words: investors’ limited attention, stock name, place name effect, the Greater Bay Area(GBA)