山高皇帝远:地理距离与上市公司股价崩盘风险的经验证据

鉴于信息不对称程度、制度实施成本和心理文化差异,文章提出"监管距离"假说,认为监管者和被监管者之间距离远近可以影响监管效果。实证分析中国沪深上市公司数据,文章从非对称风险视角出发,研讨了上市公司注册地距所在地中国证监会派出机构的地理距离对公司层面的股价崩盘风险的影响。我们发现,监管机构与上市公司总部的地理距离越远,该上市公司股价的崩盘风险越大。进一步分析发现,如果开通高铁或者上市公司所在地社会信任水平足够高,那么监管距离和崩盘风险的正相关关系是不显著的;如果监管负担严重或政府效率低下,那么监管距离和崩盘风险之间正相关关系更为显著。文章认为,地理距离具有监管信息效应、监管威慑效应和监管执行效应,能够影响股价崩盘风险。也就是说,"山高皇帝远"可以改变上市公司行为,提高金融监管效率不应忽视非正式制度的影响。

Hill Lived Far: Geographic Distance and Stock Price Crash Risk

Geographic distances can influence on the behavior of economic agents. In this paper we propose the hypothesis of regulatory distance. Given the framework of asymmetric risks, we argue that informal institutions play an important role in improving regulatory efficiencies with demonstrating the economic consequences of "Hill Lived Far". The magnitudesof information asymmetry are associated with geographical distances. Although the information transmission technology develops fast, geographical distances still play a role in disseminating information in financial markets, particularly the so-called soft information. As geographical distance increases, the costs of information collection increase, which requires more regulatory costs. Furthermore, geographical distances take some influence on the deterrence of bad managerial behaviors. Self-discipline somehow depends on external reminders and deterrence brings about self-control. Geographical proximity to the regulatory authority increases the perception of punishment for irregularities, which consequently reduces the deliberate violations of the regulations. Meanwhile, geographical distances are related to the cost of regulatory enforcement. The greater the geographical distance between regulators and listed companies, the higher the financial and time costs for regulatory enforcement, such as travel costs. With the resource constraints, like time and manpower, regulators are more likely to be a diligent watchdog to oversee the companies nearby, instead of these faraway. Using the hand-collected data about the Chinese listed companies, we examine how the distance between the delegated regulatory bodies and the corporate headquarters takes influences on crash risks. It is found that the stock crash risk is larger, if the distance between the firm and the local office of the CSRC is larger. However, if a high speed train is unveiled or the social trust level is rather high, the positive relationship between the regulatory distance and the crash risks is no more significant. If the regulator is overburdened or the government effectiveness is quite low, the positive relationship between the geographical distances and crash risks turns to be more significant. The contributions of this paper are as follows. This paper verifies the regulatory distance hypothesis with showing that the geographical distance from the regulatory bodies influences the behavior of Chinese enterprise managers, which significantly contributes to developing the interdisciplinary theory of geography and finance in emerging market countries. This paper also enriches the research on stock price crash risks from the perspective of geographical distance, which is an incremental contribution to constructing the framework of the influence factors for China's stock price crash risks. We further contribute to the improvement of regulatory effectiveness and efficiency with understanding the influence of the informal institutional factors.