Zero-leverage policy and stock price crash risk: Evidence from Korea

This study examines the difference in stock price crash risk between zero-leverage and non-zero-leverage firms. We find that zero-leverage firms have a significantly higher future stock price crash risk than non-zero-leverage firms. Next, we find that the positive relation between zero-leverage policy and future stock price crash risk is more pronounced when firms have higher controlling shareholders' ownership and foreign ownership. We also find that the positive relation is more pronounced for firms with low cash holdings than for those with high cash holdings. Further, we find that the positive relation is stronger for dividend-paying firms than non-dividend-paying firms. Our results are robust to alternative estimation specifications and endogeneity concerns. Overall, our findings shed light on the extent to which extreme corporate financial policy has an impact on future stock price crash risk. Our empirical evidence also provides meaningful implications for how stakeholders (especially investors) predict stock price crash risk in the context of extremely conservative capital structure.     

Chief financial officer overconfidence and stock price crash risk

Numerous studies have shown the prevalence of overconfidence among Chief Financial Officers (CFOs). Surprisingly, the real effect of CFO overconfidence is under-researched. Using data from a large sample of US-listed firms over the period 1993–2019 and adopting an eclectic theoretical approach, we find that overconfident CFOs are more likely to increase stock price crash risk than non-overconfident CFOs through risk-taking and bad news hoarding. These findings pass a series of robustness tests. Furthermore, departing from most overconfident studies that merely examine one type of top managers (i.e., Chief Executive Officer (CEO)), we consider the influence of CEO and CFO overconfidence jointly. Interestingly, we find that CFO overconfidence outweighs CEO overconfidence in influencing stock price crash risk. Moreover, the overconfidence effect is intensified when overconfident CFOs collaborate with overconfident CEOs, thus raising stock price crash risk. However, stronger governance and a transparent information environment constrain overconfident CFOs' effect on stock price crash risk. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of CFO overconfidence in determining stock return tail risks.     

Executive option exercises and financial misreporting

Several recent papers document that the magnitude of potential gains from stock-based compensation is positively related to the likelihood of misreporting. In a sample of firms that announce restatements of their financial statements from 1997 to 2002, we examine whether managers realize these potential gains occurring from their accounting choices. After controlling for diversification needs and stock price impact, we find no significant evidence of higher option exercises by executives in the misreported years. However, for firms that are more likely to have made deliberate aggressive accounting choices, we find significant evidence of higher option exercises. For these firms, option exercises are higher by 20–60% in comparison to industry and size matched nonrestating firms. Options exercises by executives are also increasing in the magnitude of the restatement as captured by the effect of the restatement on net income. These higher option exercises tend to be more pervasive and are not just confined to the CEO and CFO of the firm.     

Major government customers and stock price crash risk

This paper studies whether government’s participation in product market, as a customer, affects supplier firms’ stock price crash risk. Using a sample of U.S. firms from 1980 to 2015, we find robust evidence that the presence of major government customers is associated with a lower level of stock price crash risk for supplier firms. Further, we show that government customers can lower suppliers’ crash risk by imposing monitoring activities on suppliers and/or reducing suppliers’ operational risk, leading to a reduction in supplier managers’ bad news hoarding behavior. Overall, our results indicate that government spending, as an important public policy, can significantly affect shareholders’ value by mitigating stock price crash risk.     

Stock price crash risk and internal control weakness: presence vs. disclosure effect

This study examines the stock price crash risk for a sample of firms that disclosed internal control weaknesses (ICW) under Section 404 of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX). We find that in the year prior to the initial disclosures, ICW firms are more crash‐prone than firms with effective internal controls. This positive relation is more pronounced when weakness problems are associated with a firm's financial reporting process. More importantly, we find that stock price crash risk reduces significantly after the disclosures of ICWs, despite the disclosure itself signalling bad news. The above results hold after controlling for various firm‐specific determinants of crash risk and ICWs. Using an ICW disclosure as a natural experiment, our study attempts to isolate the presence effect of undisclosed ICWs from the initial disclosure effect of internal control weakness on stock price crash risk. In so doing, we provide more direct evidence on the causal relation between the quality of financial reporting and stock price crash risk.     

Powerful CEOs and stock price crash risk

We find that powerful chief executive officers (CEOs) are associated with higher crash risk. The positive association between CEO power and crash risk holds when controlling for earnings management, tax avoidance, chief executive officer's option incentives, and CEO overconfidence. Firms with powerful CEOs have higher probability of financial restatements, lower proportion of negative to positive earnings guidance, and lower ratio of negative to positive words in their financial statements. The association between powerful CEOs and higher crash risk is mostly evident among firms with higher sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock prices and when CEOs have lower general skills. External monitoring mechanisms weaken but do not eliminate the association between powerful founder CEOs and higher crash risk.     

Does a national industrial policy promote financial market stability? A study based on stock price crash risk

Whether the implementation of a national industrial policy can maintain stability in the financial market is a question of theoretical and practical significance. Using data from China’s non-financial listed firms from 2007 to 2020, we find that a national industrial policy lowers stock price crash risk. We find that the effect of an industrial policy on lowering stock price crash risk is more pronounced in regions with low levels of regional marketization and if firms have high external uncertainty, low total asset turnover, greater earnings management and receive small increments of long-term loans and fewer government subsidies, suggesting that industrial policies lower stock price crash risk by improving firm fundamentals and reducing external uncertainty, agency costs and information asymmetry.     

Do mandatory risk factor disclosures reduce stock price crash risk?

We test whether voluntary or mandatory risk factor disclosures (RFDs) in 10-K filings is associated with a reduction in stock price crash risk. We find that the level of mandatory RFDs in 10-K filings is associated with a reduction in stock price crash risk but find no similar relationship for voluntary RFDs. We exploit two exogenous shocks to mitigate endogeneity concerns that remain to be addressed in the literature. We investigate the moderators for this relationship and find the reduction is magnified among firms with higher information asymmetry, higher litigation risk, or better corporate governance. Overall, our findings identify a potential avenue to mitigate stock price crash risk and provide evidence that mandated RFDs contain useful information content and benefit investors.     

Do bankers on the board reduce crash risk?

Commercial banker‐directors (CBDs) bring both financial expertise in risk management and conflicts of interest between shareholders and debtholders. The burgeoning literature on stock price crash risk generates important questions of whether CBDs reduce crash risk. Using BoardEx data from 1999 to 2009, we find supporting evidence that the firms with CBDs experience lower stock price crash risk. Moreover, the reduction of crash risk is more pronounced for high‐risk firms under the monitoring of affiliated banker‐directors. The results of this study are robust to the Heckman selection model, propensity score matching, and alternative measures of crash risk.     

Stock price crash risk and CEO power: Firm-level analysis

This study examines the impact of stock price crash risk on future CEO power. Using a large panel sample with 17,816 firm-year observations, we posit and find a significant negative impact of stock price crash risk on CEO power, suggesting that CEO power becomes smaller after stock price crashes. We also find that our results are stronger for firms with female CEOs and are largely driven by firms with shorter-tenure CEOs. In addition, we find that the significant negative impact of stock price crash risk on CEO power is diminished for firms with strong corporate governance. Our study responds to the call in Habib, Hasan, and Jiang (2018) by providing more empirical evidence on the consequences of stock price crash risk.     

Board directors with foreign experience and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

This study examines the impact of board directors with foreign experience (BDFEs) on stock price crash risk. We find that BDFEs help reduce crash risk. This association is robust to a series of robustness checks, including a firm fixed effects model, controlling for possibly omitted variables, and instrumental variable estimations. Moreover, we find that the negative association between BDFEs and crash risk is more pronounced for firms with more agency problems, weaker corporate governance, and less overall transparency. Our findings suggest that the characteristics of board directors matter in determining stock price crash risk.     

Trust and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

This paper examines the impact of social trust on stock price crash risk. Social trust measures the level of mutual trust among the members of a society. Using a large sample of Chinese listed firms for the 2001–2015 period, we find that firms headquartered in regions of high social trust tend to have smaller crash risks. This result is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests and is more prominent for State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), for firms with weak monitoring, and for firms with higher risk-taking. Moreover, we observe that firms in regions of high social trust are associated with higher accounting conservatism and fewer financial restatements. Our study suggests that social trust is an important variable that is omitted in the literature investigating the predictors of stock price crashes.     

金融同业活动与实体企业经营风险——来自地区层面同业存单业务的证据

本文研究了地区层面金融同业活动对实体企业经营风险的影响。基于各省份金融机构开启同业存单业务的研究表明,地区层面金融同业活动显著提升了当地上市企业股价大幅下跌的风险。进一步研究表明,随着同业存单业务的发展,当地上市企业债务融资成本和风险水平有所上升,而业绩表现和市场价值有所下降。上述发现表明,企业融资链条变长后,信贷市场道德风险上升,部分企业因风险偏好增强导致经营风险上升,更容易突然出现负面事件而导致股价大幅下跌。本文的发现揭示了金融同业活动存在监管规避的可能性及其影响实体企业的潜在路径,凸显了完善金融监管以更好服务实体经济发展的重要现实意义。     

金融同业活动与实体企业经营风险——来自地区层面同业存单业务的证据

本文研究了地区层面金融同业活动对实体企业经营风险的影响。基于各省份金融机构开启同业存单业务的研究表明,地区层面金融同业活动显著提升了当地上市企业股价大幅下跌的风险。进一步研究表明,随着同业存单业务的发展,当地上市企业债务融资成本和风险水平有所上升,而业绩表现和市场价值有所下降。上述发现表明,企业融资链条变长后,信贷市场道德风险上升,部分企业因风险偏好增强导致经营风险上升,更容易突然出现负面事件而导致股价大幅下跌。本文的发现揭示了金融同业活动存在监管规避的可能性及其影响实体企业的潜在路径,凸显了完善金融监管以更好服务实体经济发展的重要现实意义。     

Bearing an imprint: CEOs' early-life experience of the Great Chinese Famine and stock price crash risk

We propose and test whether adverse life events experienced by CEOs are associated with firms' stock price crash risk. Based on a large sample of Chinese companies from 2000 to 2015, we find evidence that companies whose CEOs experienced the Great Chinese Famine in early life have lower stock price crash risk than those with CEOs who did not experience the famine. Further, the negative association between famine experience and crash risk is more pronounced for firms whose CEOs have greater decision-making powers and for non-State-owned enterprises. We also find direct links between famine experience and various factors that have already been documented as determinants of crash risk. Our results support behavior economics theory on imprinting: CEO memories of adverse life experiences have an indelible effect on their decision-making processes, which in turn influence how the financial information is provided and disclosed to the stock market.     

Do geographically nearby major customers mitigate suppliers’ stock price crash risk?

This study examines the impact of geographically nearby major customers on suppliers' stock price crash risk. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms and their top five (major) customers during the period 2008–2019, we find a significantly negative association. This association is robust in a series of robustness checks, including the use of instrumental variables estimations, propensity score matching procedure, and Heckman two-step sample selection model. The mitigating effect of supplier?customer proximity on crash risk is more pronounced for suppliers with lower corporate transparency and greater operational uncertainty. Finally, we identify two possible mechanisms through which geographically nearby major customers reduce suppliers’ crash risk: fewer financial restatements and higher accounting conservatism of suppliers. The findings of this study indicate that listed firms may choose geographically nearby customers to reduce crash risk.     

Does media coverage deter firms from withholding bad news? Evidence from stock price crash risk

Spurred by the informational and disciplinary roles that the media fulfils, this study provides initial evidence on how higher media coverage is associated with a lower tendency of firms withholding bad news, proxied by stock price crash risk. Our main findings are robust to a battery of tests that account for endogeneity concerns including a difference-in-differences analysis based on newspaper closures that exogenously reduce media coverage and a regression-discontinuity design analysis based on the top band of Russell 2000 and lower band of Russell 1000 index stocks. Additional tests reveal that the negative relation between media coverage and stock price crash risk is concentrated within firms with more negative and novel news coverage and firms with higher litigation or reputation risks. We also find that media plays an important role in reducing future stock price crash risk when there is reduced monitoring by other external monitoring mechanisms such as external auditors, financial analysts, and institutional shareholders.     

Divergence of Cash Flow and Voting Rights,Opacity, and Stock Price Crash Risk: International Evidence

This study investigates whether and how the deviation of cash flow rights (ownership) from voting rights (control), or simply the ownership‐control wedge, influences the likelihood that extreme negative outliers occur in stock return distributions, which we refer to as stock price crash risk. We do so using a comprehensive panel data set of firms with a dual‐class share structure from 20 countries around the world for the period of 1995–2007. We predict and find that opaque firms with a large wedge are more crash prone than opaque firms with a small wedge. In addition, we predict and find that the positive relation between the wedge and crash risk is less pronounced for firms with more effective external monitoring and for firms with greater growth opportunities. The results of this study are broadly consistent with Jin and Myers’s theory that agency costs, combined with opacity, exacerbate stock price crash risk.     

Earnings management and stock price crashes post U.S. cross-delistings

We examine whether cross-delisted firms from the major U.S. stock exchanges experience an increase in crash risk associated with earnings management. Consistent with our prediction, we find that earnings management has a greater positive impact on stock price crash risk post cross-delisting when compared to a control group of firms that remain cross-listed. More importantly, we find that this effect is more pronounced for cross-delisted firms from countries with weaker investor protection, poorer quality of their information environment and less conservative accounting practices. Our findings are robust to the potential endogenous nature of the cross-delisting decision, alternative measures of stock price crash risk and information asymmetry. We interpret our results as evidence of a “reverse bonding effect” following cross-delistings from U.S. stock exchanges.