Do political connections affect stock price crash risk? Firm-level evidence from China

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in the period from 2003 to 2012, this paper empirically investigates how the presence of politically connected directors affects stock price crash risk. We thereby make a distinction between listed state-controlled firms and privately controlled firms due to their different incentives to appoint politicians as directors on the board. Our empirical results show that politically connected directors exacerbate stock price crash risk in listed state-controlled firms, an effect driven by the appointment of local government officials as directors. In contrast, hiring politicians as directors, particularly central-government-affiliated directors, helps listed privately controlled firms to reduce stock price crash risk. Finally, good quality of institutions does not help to alleviate the positive relationship between political connections and stock price crash risk in listed state-controlled firms. However, it does weaken the role of political connections in reducing crash risk in listed privately controlled firms.     

Multi-dimensional corporate social responsibilities and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

Worldwide, there has been an ongoing debate about whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) can lead to better financial market performance, or whether corporations can do well by doing good. Working with a sample of all listed companies in China from 2010 to 2017, this study examines the impacts of three dimensions of CSR on stock price crash risk. We find that CSR, especially firms' responsibility to the environment and stakeholders, significantly reduces stock price crash risk, while social contributions such as charitable donations have no significant effect on stock crash risk. Attracting long-term institutional investors is the primary mechanism through which CSR can curb crash risk. Mitigating earnings management is also a channel through which overall CSR and stakeholder responsibility contribute to a lower stock crash risk. Finally, we find that stakeholder responsibility and environmental responsibility can help improve stock market performance.     

Attention! Distracted institutional investors and stock price crash

Using the extreme returns of firms in unrelated industries of institutional shareholders' portfolios as exogenous variations in institutional investor distraction (Kempf et al. 2017), we find a positive and significant relation between institutional shareholder distraction and stock price crash risk. The effect is associated with weakened monitoring, and it becomes stronger when alternative corporate governance is weaker and when managers' incentives to hoard bad information are stronger. Managers reduce firms' accounting conservatism when institutional investors become distracted, which is evidence of an increased motivation to hoard bad news. Overall, our findings shed additional light on the important monitoring role of institutional investors in corporate governance.     

CEO power and stock price crash risk in China: Do female directors' critical mass and ownership structure matter?

This study investigates how CEO power is associated with stock price crash risk. We further examine the moderating roles of female directors' critical mass and ownership structure on the relationship between CEO power and stock price crash risk. Employing one of the largest datasets to-date of Chinese listed firms over the 2005–2015 period (13,421 firm-year observations), we find that CEO's power to increase the likelihood of stock price crash risk is significantly mitigated when the percentage of: (a) female directors; and (b) ownership by blockholders and institutions, is high within firms. We interpret our findings within a theoretical framework that draws insights from neo-institutional, managerial power and critical mass theories. The findings are robust to the use of alternative measures, estimation methods and endogeneity issues.     

Board diversity and stock price crash risk

We show how board diversity influences stock price crash risk. By classifying board diversity into relation-oriented diversity (gender and age) and task-oriented diversity (tenure and education), we find that greater diversity on board can lower the risk of future stock crash. Additional analyses show that the effect of board diversity on future crash risk is stronger for firms with high information opacity and low institutional ownership. Overall, our findings provide new insights and suggest for more diverse boards to improve corporate governance practices.     

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.     

Stock price synchronicity,crash risk,and institutional investors

Both stock price synchronicity and crash risk are negatively related to the firm's ownership by dedicated institutional investors, which have strong incentive to monitor due to their large stake holdings and long investment horizons. In contrast, the relations become positive for transient institutional investors as they tend to trade rather than monitor. These findings suggest that institutional monitoring limits managers' extraction of the firm's cash flows, which reduces the firm-specific risk absorbed by managers, thereby leading to a lower R². Moreover, institutional monitoring mitigates managerial bad-news hoarding, which results in a stock price crash when the accumulated bad news is finally released.     

Compensation peer crash risks and corporate own investments: New evidences from U.S. stock markets

This study, employing US listed firms with compensation peer disclosures, investigates the impact of compensation and industry peer stock price crash risks on firms' own investments. We document three new evidences in the examination. First, we find that firms' own investments are positively affected by compensation peer crash risks but not industry peers. Second, we show that firms' own investments are explained by compensation peer crash risks only. Third, we demonstrate that the compensation peer crash risks and firms' own investments relation is positively moderated by corporate governance. Besides, additional analysis suggests that peers' incentive effect is a possible explanation to the positive compensation peer crash risks and firms' own investments relation.     

Employee relations and stock price crash risk: Evidence from employee lawsuits

In this paper, we examine the effect of firms' employee relations, measured by the number of employee lawsuits divided by the total number of employees, on stock price crash risk. Firms with higher employee lawsuit ratios tend to have higher stock price crash risk. Our results are robust after addressing possible endogeneity and using alternative measures of employee relations and stock price crash risk. We also find that the association between the employee lawsuit ratio and stock price crash risk is less prominent for state-owned enterprises, for firms with stringent external monitoring, and for firms with positive earnings news. Finally, earnings aggressiveness appears to be the channel through which the employee lawsuit ratio affects stock price crash risk. Collectively, our study is in line with the stakeholder theory, and highlights the importance of employee lawsuit for preventing crash of stock price.     

Does corporate eco-innovation affect stock price crash risk?

We examine the effect of corporate environmental innovation (hereafter eco-innovation) on stock price crash risk and document a significant negative association. Utilising a large sample of publicly listed U.S. firms for the period 2003 to 2017, we find that an increase in eco-innovation from the 25th to the 75th percentile is associated with 17.62% reduction in stock price crash risk. This outcome remains robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and after accounting for potential endogeneity concerns. Eco-innovative firms attract more institutional investors and equity analyst following and disclose more information leading to lower stock price crash risk. Additional tests reveal that the negative effect of eco-innovation is contingent on the political leadership's ideology and environmental sensitivity. Our paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on the costs and benefits of eco-innovation, documenting the value-enhancing perspective of eco-innovation.     

Corporate opacity and effectiveness of independent female directors

Research shows female directors are associated with proxies for improved monitoring, yet finds mixed results as to their effect on firm performance. Hypothesizing that their performance impact depends on the firms' information environment, we find that independent female directors have a negative (positive) effect on performance in opaque (transparent) firms, an effect which is incremental to that of independent male directors. We then explore the channels which drive this finding. The standard measure of the information environment considers opacity from the view of external parties such as analysts and investors. However, independent directors have greater access to information than external parties. Consequently, we investigate whether additional data sources, if they exist, mitigate the impact of “external” opacity on the effect of independent female directors on firm performance. We find that when independent female directors have greater access to information either from sources inside, e.g., an independent board chair, or outside, e.g., a large network, the firm, their negative effect on performance in opaque firms dissipates. Investigating their positive impact in transparent firms, we find that independent female directors decrease both discretionary accruals and the likelihood of an Accounting and Auditing Enforcement release.     

When stock price crash risk meets fundamentals

We investigate the relationship between fundamental strength and stock price crash risk by analyzing a large sample of Chinese firms. We mainly find that firms with stronger (weaker) total fundamental strength, higher (lower) profitability and higher (lower) operating efficiency have lower (higher) stock price crash risk. Moreover, this negative relationship is more pronounced for firms with a great number of short-term institutional investors and opaque firms. Additional test illustrates that internal control could ameliorate this negative relationship. All these findings are robust to alternative measurements of crash risk and endogeneity correction.     

Does CSR matter in times of crisis? Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

The debate over how firm stakeholder engagement is tied to preserving shareholder wealth has received growing attention in recent years, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Against this backdrop, we examine the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stock market returns during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced market crash and the post-crash recovery. Using a sample of 1750 U.S. firms and two major sources of CSR ratings, we find no evidence that CSR affected stock returns during the crash period. This result is robust to various sensitivity tests. In additional cross-sectional analysis, we find some supporting evidence, albeit weak, that the relation between CSR and stock returns during the pandemic-related crisis is more positive when CSR is congruent with a firm's institutional environment. We also find that Business Roundtable companies, which committed to protecting stakeholder interests prior to the pandemic, do not outperform during the pandemic crisis. We conclude that pre-crisis CSR is not effective at shielding shareholder wealth from the adverse effects of a crisis, suggesting a potential disconnect between firms' CSR orientation (ratings) and actual actions. Our evidence suggests that investors can distinguish between genuine CSR and firms engaging in cheap talk.     

Controlling shareholder share pledging and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

Using the unique setting of the Chinese market from 2003 to 2018, this study examines how share pledging behavior affects firms' stock price crash risk by analyzing the costs and benefits of the controlling shareholder's pledging decision to hoard bad news. We find that during the controlling shareholder share-pledging period, pledged firms exhibit significantly higher future stock price crash risk than their non-pledged counterparts. The risk is also higher during this period relative to in shareholders' own pre-pledging and post-pledging benchmark periods. Considering the internal and external information environment, we further observe a less pronounced increase in stock price crash risk for pledged firms with a strong internal control system and for those with more media attention. Together, our results reveal controlling shareholders' hedging motivations for engaging in pledging activities and the role played by the internal and external information environment in constraining the opportunistic behavior of controlling shareholders.     

基于制度环境视角的非效率投资与股价崩盘风险研究

研究宏观层面的治理因子对企业非效率投资的调节作用,进而研究价格崩盘的成因。发现：较高的市场化进程、较低的政府干预程度和完善的法治环境都有助于抑制由非效率投资行为引发的股价崩盘风险。进一步的研究表明,企业非效率投资主要由代理成本而非信息不对称问题产生,进而影响价格崩盘;国有企业非效率投资对股价崩盘风险的影响大于非国有企业,但是制度环境的抑制作用对国有企业样本不明显。本文的研究结果为从宏观层面降低股价崩盘风险提供了经验证据,为维护我国股市稳定发展,推进国家治理体系建设提供了政策启示。     

Adoption and content of key audit matters and stock price crash risk

We examine whether the mandate for auditors to report key audit matters (KAMs) affects firm-specific stock price crash risk in China. Auditors in China are required to issue an expanded audit report that contains KAMs for AH-share firms, effective on January 1, 2017 (applicable to the financial year 2016), and for A-share firms, effective on January 1, 2018 (applicable to the financial year 2017). Applying a staggered difference-in-differences (D-i-D) design on a sample of 18,751 observations for financial years 2012–2019, we find that auditor reporting of KAMs is not significantly associated with stock price crash risk. The mechanism tests show that the disclosure of KAMs does not reduce information opaqueness and managerial opportunistic behaviors. Furthermore, our findings are not sensitive, but are robust to firms' corporate governance, product market competition, ownership structure, and auditor size. Overall, our study informs regulators, investors, auditors, and other stakeholders interested in the economic consequences of mandating KAM disclosures.     

Institutional investor information network,analyst forecasting and stock price crash risk

In this paper, we construct the information network of fund investors based on the theory of social relationship networks and examine its impact of fund information sharing with analysts on stock price crash risk. Our results show that private information sharing among institutional investors reduces crash risk. Further results show that fund information sharing can alleviate analyst optimism bias and improve analyst forecast accuracy, which further reduces stock price crash risk. Moreover, these identified effects are more pronounced in a bull market than a bear market. Our study contributes to the research on private information transmission in fund information networks, and provides a new perspective for recognizing the relationships among institutional investor behavior, analyst forecasting, and stock price crash risk.     

Information interaction among institutional investors and stock price crash risk based on multiplex networks

Using a large sample of A-share listed companies on the Chinese stock market, we investigate the impact of information interaction among institutional investors (IIAII) on stock price crash risk. IIAII is measured using a multiplex network constructed from data on the multiple social relations of institutional investors. We find a positive and significant relationship between IIAII and crash risk. The results of the influencing mechanism analysis show that IIAII influences crash risk through the herd effect rather than the monitoring effect. Overall, our findings elucidate the important role of institutional investors in corporate governance and promote the application of multiplex network theory to the financial field.     

Economic policy uncertainty and stock price crash risk

This paper studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty on stock price crash risk using data from China. We develop a new index to measure Chinese economic policy uncertainty and find that economic policy uncertainty has a remarkable positive effect on stock price crash risk. However, the effect reverses later. The results also indicate that the positive effect of economic policy uncertainty on stock price crash risk is more prominent for state‐owned enterprises. Moreover, this effect is more prominent for firms with higher information asymmetry and firms with greater disagreement among investors, indicating that economic policy uncertainty affects crash risk through two mechanisms: managers’ concealment of bad news and investors’ heterogeneous beliefs.     

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.