公司策略性媒体披露行为研究最新进展与述评

因为新闻媒体对资产定价的重要影响,致使越来越多公司管理层开始重视对媒体披露的主动管理,特别是重大事件期间,公司的策略性媒体披露倾向尤为明显,以谋求自身利益的最大化。与此同时,这一现象也日益为学者们所关注,并开始成为公司财务与金融研究的热点前沿。本文主要基于行为金融学视角,从公司策略性媒体披露的内涵、动因、方式、主要内容及表现等维度,对现有相关文献进行了系统梳理,旨在进一步剖析公司管理层在媒体披露中的重要作用,帮助人们更好地理解和把握股票市场波动的成因及本质。最后,就其未来研究方向做了进一步的探讨。     

企业社会责任能降低股价同步性吗？——基于强制披露企业社会责任报告的准自然实验

中国2008 年沪深证券交易所强制披露社会责任报告政策为笔者研究其政策效应提供了准 自然实验,文章以2006-2011 年中国A 股上市公司为样本,分别从信息不对称和代理成本两条路 径研究强制披露社会责任报告对股价同步性的影响。运用PSM-DID 双重差分模型研究发现: 强制 披露社会责任报告与股价同步性呈现显著负相关关系,说明强制披露社会责任报告有助于降低股 价同步性,在通过安慰剂实验、变量替换和平行效应检验等稳健性检验后,以上结论仍成立。对 影响路径的分析发现,强制披露社会责任报告通过降低信息不对称和代理成本影响未来股价同步 性。     

Extreme Uncertainty and Forward‐looking Disclosure Properties

This study investigates the effect of extreme uncertainty on disclosure behaviour by analyzing the quality and quantity of forward‐looking disclosures during the global financial crisis and pre‐crisis periods, controlling for other determinants of disclosure behaviour. Prior research has struggled to distinguish between the quality and quantity dimensions of forward‐looking disclosures. Also, the impact of the recent financial crisis on these forward‐looking disclosure attributes has not yet been examined systematically. We address this gap by exploiting the unique setting of German publicly traded firms. These firms must provide forward‐looking information within their audited financial statements, although relevant regulation is sufficiently vague to allow great variation in the quality, scope and quantity of forward‐looking disclosures actually observed. Using hand‐collected data from 2005 to 2009, we provide evidence of a significantly negative association between crisis and disclosure quality. This finding is robust to several different disclosure quality proxies and regression specifications. In contrast, we find no negative significant relation between crisis and disclosure quantity; rather, there is evidence that reported volume increases during the crisis. Our results are consistent with extreme uncertainty, as occurring during times of crisis, negatively affecting the quality of voluntary disclosures, while firms maintain or increase disclosure quantity, ultimately diluting the information density of forward‐looking disclosures.     

IFRS Adoption and Stock Prices of Japanese Firms in Governance System Transition

This study examines firms' decision to voluntarily adopt IFRS in a setting where there are changes to the governance system in a traditionally code law country, as well as how the market responds to such decisions. We find the probability of voluntary IFRS adoption to be higher among firms that have a high proportion of foreign shareholders, undertake quality audits, have low levels of leverage, feature a nominating committee, and are included in the new market index. In addition, the stock prices of IFRS adopters tend to increase around the announcement date of IFRS adoption, compared to those of non-adopters. Finally, market reactions are smaller for firms that feature a nominating committee, and are included in the new market index—perhaps because IFRS adoption by these firms is less surprising to market participants, and because IFRS adoption is not expected to add large incremental value to these firms.     

Public Disclosure of Audit Fees and Bargaining Power between the Client and Auditor: Evidence from China

Before the public disclosure of audit fees was mandated, it was unlikely for an audit client to have accurate information about how much other companies were charged by their auditors. Public fee disclosure decreases the cost of auditees' access to audit fee information for the auditor's portfolio of clients and is thus likely to increase the relative bargaining power of auditees over auditors when they negotiate audit fees. Using both proprietary and public audit fee data before and after public fee disclosure was mandated in China, we provide evidence consistent with the preceding conjecture. We find that public fee disclosure reinforces the magnitude of audit fee decreases for overcharged clients and weakens auditors' ability to raise audit fees for undercharged clients. These findings suggest the existence of unintended consequences of public fee disclosure regulation, the original rationale of which was a concern about audit pricing practices that could undermine auditor independence.     

The Effects of Regulating Hidden Add‐On Costs

We examine the welfare effects of price and disclosure regulation in a model where firms can shroud add‐on costs, such as penalty fees for consumer financial products. Such regulation can increase or decrease welfare even when there are no direct costs. There are, however, strong complementarities between price controls and disclosure mandates: conditional on disclosure being mandated, price controls always (weakly) increase welfare, and conditional on prices being sufficiently constrained, disclosure mandates always (weakly) increase welfare.     

Disclosure Versus Recognition: Inferences from Subsequent Events

Standard setters explicitly state that disclosure should not substitute for recognition in financial reports. Consistent with this directive, prior research shows that investors find recognized values more pertinent than disclosed values. However, it remains unclear whether reporting items are recognized because they are more relevant for investing decisions, or whether requiring recognition itself prompts differing behavior on the part of firms and investors. Using the setting of subsequent events, I identify the differential effect of requiring disclosure versus recognition in a setting where the accounting treatment of an item is exogenously determined. For comparable events, I find a stronger initial market response for firms required to recognize relative to firms that must disclose, although the large magnitude of the identified effect calls into question whether this difference can be attributed to accounting treatments alone. In examining various reasons for the stronger market response to recognized values, I fail to find support for the hypothesis that this difference is due to differential reliability of disclosed and recognized values. I do find some evidence that investors underreact to disclosed events, consistent with investors incurring higher processing costs when using disclosed information.     

A stakeholder analysis of employee disclosures in annual reports

Little empirical research has identified what drives companies to voluntarily report employee‐related information. Ullmann's three‐dimensional stakeholder theory model is applied as a framework to analyse associations with corporate employee‐related disclosures. Measures are developed to estimate stakeholder power, strategic posture and economic performance associated with employee‐related disclosures. Results indicate that employee‐related disclosures increase with more employee share ownership, employee concentration, the quality of corporate governance, employee recognition in corporate mission statements, adverse publicity about employees and economic performance measured by profit per employee.     

Shareholder say on pay and CEO compensation: three strikes and the board is out

From 2011 in Australia, if over 25% of shareholders vote against a non‐binding remuneration resolution, firms are awarded a ‘strike’. We examine 237 firms that receive a strike relative to matched firms, and find no association with any measure of CEO pay. However, we do find that strike firms have higher book‐to‐market and leverage ratios, suggesting that the remuneration vote is not used to target excessive pay. We also find that firms respond to a strike by decreasing the discretionary bonus component of CEO pay by 57.10% more than non‐strike firms and increasing their remuneration disclosure by 10.95%.     

境外上市与企业投资效率

截至2021年11月,我国单独境外上市企业占到境外上市企业总数的88.32%,但单独境外上市的研究明显与该数据不匹配,研究数量缺乏。为扩充该方面研究,本文以2012~2020年单独在美国和中国香港上市的中资企业为研究对象,对境外上市与投资效率关系进行检验。实证结果发现,单独境外上市与境内上市企业相比投资效率更低,区分企业上市地点后发现,规模大、信息透明度低、存在代理成本的赴港上市企业比境内上市企业投资效率低,规模小、代理成本高、信息透明度低的赴美上市企业比境内上市企业投资效率低。通过机制分析发现,信息透明度、境外上市和非效率投资三者存在"遮掩效应",境外上市企业未能受到有效的信息约束。