机构投资者实地调研能否缓解股价同步性——基于我国A股上市公司的经验证据

本文以2014-2018年我国深圳A股上市公司为样本,实证检验了机构投资者实地调研与股价同步性的关系,并探究了信息披露质量和机构投资者持股比例对此关系的调节作用.研究结果表明,机构投资者实地调研提升了公司的特质信息含量,显著降低了股价同步性.进一步研究发现,机构投资者实地调研对股价同步性的降低作用在信息披露质量较好的公司和机构持股比例较大的公司更为显著.本文的研究不仅拓展了现有关于机构投资者信息中介作用的研究,丰富了关于股价同步性影响因素方面的相关文献,并为监管部门完善上市公司信息披露制度、引导投资者与上市公司深入交流,提供了有益启示.     

上市公司的地理特征影响机构投资者的持股决策吗?——来自中国证券市场的经验证据

随着技术科技的高速发展,企业与其利益相关者的距离被无限拉近,彼此之间的沟通也日趋频繁。但是投资者与被投资对象的地理特征影响信息的获取数量和质量,因此他们之间的互动成本和强度很大程度上仍然取决于上市公司的地理特征。本文在分析我国上市公司地理分布特征的基础上,考察了地理特征变量在机构投资者持股决策中的作用。研究发现,位于东部地区的上市公司更受机构投资者的亲睐,即使在控制上市公司财务信息和市场表现信息的情况下,区域地理特征变量仍然显著影响机构投资者的持股决策;上市公司办公地与机构投资者之间的距离远近负向影响机构投资者的持股比例,但是在控制上市公司基本面信息的情况下,距离特征变量的影响力下降。     

IFRS、财务分析师、机构投资者和权益资本成本——基于信息治理观视角

本文基于信息治理观视角,探讨新会计准则实施前后,财务分析师和机构投资者对权益资本成本的影响。研究发现,新会计准则实施后,上市公司的权益资本成本增加,但是,由于财务分析师和机构投资者的信息治理功能,上市公司的权益资本成本会降低,并且发现二者以相互替代的方式产生影响。进一步分析发现,在采用新会计准则后,财务分析师和机构投资者均能减少应计盈余管理行为。这支持了本文的会计信息治理观,表明财务分析师和机构投资者具有降低公司信息风险的作用。     

机构投资者持股、股权特征和信息披露质量

研究分析机构投资者持股对上市公司信息披露质量的影响,并进一步探索了异质机构及其所处股权环境在其中的作用. 研究发现,机构投资者整体能够提高上市公司信息披露质量;当股权集中且存在稳定型机构时,机构持股比例与信息披露质量显著正相关;当股权集中且存在交易型机构时,二者显著负相关. 这就要求我国进一步完善信息披露制度、机构投资者多元化和股权分置改革制度.     

共同机构投资者对管理层语调操纵的影响研究

持续提高信息披露质量是实现上市公司高质量发展的必由之路。以2011—2021年沪、深A股上市公司为研究样本，以管理层语调操纵为研究视角，检验共同机构投资者对上市公司信息披露质量的作用效果。研究结果显示，共同机构投资者有效抑制了管理层语调操纵。作用机制研究表明，共同机构投资者通过改善信息环境和优化公司治理进而抑制管理层语调操纵。此外，拓展性分析表明，共同机构投资者对管理层语调操纵的抑制作用在国有性质、分析师跟踪人数多以及内部控制质量低的企业中更为显著。研究结论为进一步深化共同机构投资者以及上市公司信息披露监管提供了实证依据和参考借鉴。     

人性假设和沟通理论在上市公司信息披露中的应用探讨

提升上市公司的信息披露质量是保护中小投资者利益,优化市场配置的有效手段。随着经济的发展,投资者对上市公司非财务信息提出更高的要求,本文试图将组织行为学中人性假设和沟通所产生的信息运用应用于非财务信息披露,并提出财务报告披露其内容的实现方式,以期促进上市公司的信息披露质量得到进一步提升。     

我国上市公司财务重述动因分析

本文基于几家我国上市公司财务重述行为的动因分析,从注册会计师应该如何审计企业财务重述行为、监管机构应该如何对财务重述行为进行监管及如何加强投资者、银行等其他信息使用者对企业财务重述行为有效性的识别这三个方面对上市公司财务重述进行解读。     

我国上市公司财务重述动因分析

本文基于几家我国上市公司财务重述行为的动因分析,从注册会计师应该如何审计企业财务重述行为、监管机构应该如何对财务重述行为进行监管及如何加强投资者、银行等其他信息使用者对企业财务重述行为有效性的识别这三个方面对上市公司财务重述进行解读。     

财务困境上市公司信息披露行为初探

众多的研究表明,上市公司的信息披露程度和质量会对公司声誉、股票价格、资本成本等多方面产生重大的影响,因而位于财务困境中的上市公司往往会在对社会公众进行公司财务信息披露方面采取一定的策略。与正常运营时期相比,财务困境上市公司在披露数量和披露内容方面都可能会发生改变。然而,目前国内研究大多仅将面临的财务危机作为导致上市公司会计信息失真的因素之一,却没有对位于财务困境中的上市公司信息披露行为做更为全面深入的探讨。本文对该类上市公司信息披露行为各方面的改变进行了归纳并探讨这些改变发生的原因。并进一步论述了把握财务困境上市公司信息披露的规律对投资者以及市场监管机构的重要性。     

高质量的互动可以提高股票价格信息效率吗——基于“上证e互动”的研究北大核心

本文通过网络爬虫技术收集了上市公司在“上证e互动”与投资者的问答记录,对上市公司与投资者之间的互动质量进行度量,进而实证分析了上市公司—投资者互动质量与股票价格信息效率之间的关系。结果发现：在控制其它因素之后,上市公司—投资者互动质量与股票价格信息效率之间呈现显著的正相关关系,且这种正向关系在低审计师质量、低分析师关注及高机构投资者比例的公司尤为明显。在进一步的分析中,我们还发现上市公司与投资者之间高质量的互动通过降低信息不对称水平,来影响股票价格信息效率;上市公司与投资者之间高质量的互动还可以降低盈余公告漂移效应。本文重点关注了网络互动平台信息披露的“互动性”的特征,考察了上市公司与投资者之间的互动质量对股票价格信息效率的影响,丰富了网络互动平台文本分析的研究。     

The quality of financial reporting in China: An examination from an accounting restatement perspective

This study uses restatements to reveal the poor quality of past accounting information reported within China’s capital market. We show that up to a quarter of listed firms in mainland China explicitly admitted the poor quality of their financial information by restating their previous financial reports between 1999 and 2005. Many of these firms managed their earnings mainly via below-the-line items to avoid losses and promote survival, rather than to support refinancing goals. Such poor-quality financial reporting is more likely among firms that have weaker profitability and a shareholder base that is state-controlled, with diffused ownership and a relatively low proportion of shares held by institutional investors. Furthermore, we find the market to be relatively insensitive to such admissions. Investors’ reactions capture only the earnings information of the current reported year, rather than also reflecting the concurrently revealed correction of past financial reporting. However, the equity market does not completely ignore the earnings information. Investors’ reliance on earnings is merely low relative to the mature US market. These findings demonstrate that accounting credibility in China has low value; providing poor-quality financial information bears little cost because various market mechanisms fail to deter such behavior. Nevertheless, regulators’ ongoing efforts to enhance the quality of financial information and disclosure among listed firms are still fruitful. The frequency of restatements decreased over our sample period, which reinforces the current regulatory prospects and strategies for further improving China’s capital markets.     

Birds of a feather flock together: Institutional investors with disciplinary history and financial reporting

This study examines the role of financial misconduct of institutional investors on financial reporting quality of investee firms. We find that the firms held by institutional investors with disciplinary history (IDH) are more likely to engage in financial misreporting. Our results are not driven by institutional investor characteristics such as activism, incentives to monitor, investment horizon, or portfolio size. The impact of IDH is stronger in the firms that are more likely to engage in financial misreporting (i.e., the firms that barely meet analysts’ expectations and with CEOs with higher career concerns). IDH have stronger impact on financial misreporting when the institution reports multiple disciplinary events, the disciplinary event is recent, or disciplinary action is taken against the institutional investor company rather than just its affiliates. Results continue to hold after implementing various statistical tests to address potential endogeneity issues and alternative measures of financial misreporting.     

Investor overlap and diffusion of disclosure practices

I develop and test an investor demand-driven explanation for why one firm’s change in voluntary disclosure behavior is emulated by some firms in the industry but not others. I focus on the overlap in institutional investor ownership between two firms as a mechanism by which a first-mover firm’s increase in disclosure prompts investors to seek a similar increase from a follower firm. Using 10-K market risk disclosures as my empirical setting, I find that a firm’s decision to follow a first mover in providing more quantitative information than is required by the SEC is positively associated with an increase in investor overlap from the prior year. I also find that the association is stronger for overlap in large institutional investors, consistent with their greater influence over managers, and for firms where investor uncertainty is high. This association is found after controlling for the herding effect documented in prior studies and after addressing potential endogeneity concerns. Overall, this evidence provides new insight into patterns of intra-industry disclosure behavior and highlights investor overlap as a communication channel and feedback mechanism that helps facilitate the diffusion of disclosure practices.     

Institutional determinants of bid–ask spreads in Caribbean offshore stock exchanges

My study contrasts the influence of firm level adoption of shareholder value governance against that of formal institutional quality on listed firm’s bid ask spread in a unique sample of eight Caribbean offshore stock exchanges. Using panel data from 146 listed firms from 2004 to 2017 my findings reveal the importance of Worldwide Governance Indicator dimensions of corruption control and regulatory quality in explaining firm’s bid ask spreads. Furthermore, formal institutional quality is consistently statistically superior in explaining firm’s bid ask spreads than firm level governance adoption. My findings emphasise the importance in considering political economy in offshore financial markets.     

The annual report tone and return Comovement—Evidence from China's stock market

Our paper uses A-share firms listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) to explore the role of the textual tone of Chinese listed companies' annual reports on Chinese equities' return comovement. Our paper finds that the tone embedded in A-share companies' annual reports significantly increases Chinese stocks' return comovement as the tone exacerbates information asymmetry and reduces the quality of information. In addition, the annual report tone has a prominent effect on Chinese stocks' return comovement for stocks with low institutional ownership, private ownership stocks, and stocks with low market shares. Further investigation shows that the impact of the tone of the annual report on Chinese stocks' return comovement is strong during economic expansions, and when investor sentiment is high. An additional examination on hidden information in the textual tone suggests that published financial data do not explain a substantial part of the textual tone that is associated with the increase in the comovement, suggesting that private information should enhance informational opaqueness in the stock market.     

IPO activity and information in secondary market prices

This paper explores the link between IPO underpricing and financial markets. In my model the IPO is a mean for a capital constrained initial investor to exit and thereby to raise funds for a new investment opportunity. This investor is privately informed vis-a-vis outside investors about the profitability of the new opportunity and the quality of the firm to be offered in the IPO. He can then use the offer price and the fraction of shares sold as signals of his private information. The model shows that underpricing is not only linked to firm’s characteristics, i.e. firm value, but to elements external to the firm, i.e. new investment profitability and financial markets characteristics. In particular higher market efficiency reduces the cost of listing. This results in lower underpricing and the listing of more valuable firm. Similarly, a higher lower bound of the new investment’s profitability reduces the information asymmetry and hence reduces underpricing and widens the range of firms listed.     

Reactive or proactive? Investor sentiment as a driver of corporate social responsibility

Investors and financial markets have been a neglected stakeholder group in studies on a firm’s motivations to be socially and environmentally responsible. Despite being a strong driving force behind firm value, no study has investigated the influence of market and investor sentiments on CSR behaviour. Using a global sample, we investigate the effects of market and investor sentiments on firm CSR performance. We find negative market and investor sentiments in the prior year motivate firms to improve their CSR performance in the next year. We also find the magnitude of improvement in CSR performance differs not only by country, but by CSR sub-category as well. These findings imply that a firm’s motivation to improve its CSR performance is reactionary, rather than being driven by altruism. Regulators and proponents of CSR should thus seek to persuade investors and financial markets to put pressure on firms to further advance the CSR agenda.     

Fund ownership and stock price informativeness of Chinese listed firms

We examine the impact of mutual fund ownership on stock price informativeness in China. Existing evidence shows that stock price informativeness is low in China, and attributes this to firms’ lack of disclosure incentives under the weak investor protection institutional environment. Mutual funds are more sophisticated and influential than individual investors to monitor firms, and thus serve as an external governance mechanism to improve corporate transparency. However, the impact of mutual funds in China can also be moderated by state ownership of listed firms, which reduces firms’ dependence on outside investors for capital. Indeed, we find that mutual fund ownership is positively related to share price informativeness, but this effect is less pronounced among state-controlled firms. The main policy implication from our findings is that mutual funds contribute to the corporate information environment of emerging economies but further privatization of listed firms would be needed to realize greater benefit.     

IAS Versus U.S. GAAP: Assessing the Quality of Financial Reporting in South Africa,the United Kingdom,and the United States

In this study, we investigate whether financial reporting, using International Accounting Standards (IAS) results in quality disclosures, given differences in institutional and market forces across legal jurisdictions. This study contributes to the global accounting debate by utilizing U.S.-based companies complying with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (U.S. GAAP) as a benchmark for measuring the quality of IAS as applied by South Africa (S.A.) and United Kingdom (U.K.) companies. Although South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States are common law countries with strong investor protection, South Africa's institutional factors and market forces vary from that of the U.K. and the U.S. South Africa's financial market is less developed than that of the U.K. and the U.S. We compare the discretionary accruals of firms complying with U.S. GAAP to the discretionary accruals of U.K. and S.A. firms complying with IAS. This allows a comparison between companies (S.A. and U.K.) operating under different institutional factors and market forces that have adopted IAS versus U.S. companies that report under U.S. GAAP. Our sample, consisting of U.S., S.A., and U.K. listed firms, contains 3,166 firm-year observations relating to the period 1999–2001. The results of our study indicate that S.A firms utilizing IAS report absolute values of discretionary accruals that are significantly greater than absolute values of discretionary accruals of U.S. firms utilizing U.S. GAAP. In contrast, U.K. firms utilizing IAS report discretionary accruals that are significantly less than the discretionary accruals of companies in the United States reporting under U.S. GAAP. This study contributes to the literature by providing evidence of the quality of financial information prepared under IAS and its dependency on the institutional factors and market forces of a country.     

Why newly listed firms become acquisition targets

We study the operating, financial, and ownership structure characteristics of newly listed firms which become acquisition targets shortly after their initial public offerings. We examine whether such firms get acquired because of their successful performance or as an alternative to delisting. We find that firms, which do relatively well in terms of operating as well as stock performance and attract institutional investor interest, draw the attention of acquirers. Furthermore, we observe that investments made by newly listed target firms do not destroy shareholder value and have comparable profitability to investments made by newly listed firms which grow by acquisitions. Overall, firms acquired shortly after listing are on a growth trajectory similar to that of surviving firms.