Do Local Investors Always Know Better? Evidence from China's Market Segmentation

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
Sean Shun Cao ◽  
Tao Ma ◽  
Chi Wan

SYNOPSIS It is well documented that domestic investors have an information advantage over foreign investors. We utilize the market segmentation of Chinese A- and B-shares to disentangle the information sets of domestic versus foreign investors. We find that while domestic investors lead foreign investors in firm-specific information, the latter are better at incorporating macro-level information into stock prices. Thus, our results indicate that, in contrast to conventional beliefs, foreign investors are not at an absolute information disadvantage in emerging markets. In addition, we find that domestic investors' firm-specific information advantage is weakened among firms that have higher accounting quality and in situations where foreign investors face fewer cultural and communication barriers. Taken together, our paper indicates the key information role played by foreign investors and the importance of financial reporting quality in emerging markets.

2004 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 1119-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Piotroski ◽  
Darren T. Roulstone

We investigate the extent to which the trading and trade-generating activities of three informed market participants—financial analysts, institutional investors, and insiders—influence the relative amount of firm-specific, industry-level, and market-level information impounded into stock prices, as measured by stock return synchronicity. We find that stock return synchronicity is positively associated with analyst forecasting activities, consistent with analysts increasing the amount of industry-level information in prices through intra-industry information transfers. In contrast, stock return synchronicity is inversely related to insider trades, consistent with these transactions conveying firm-specific information. Supplemental tests show that insider and institutional trading accelerate the incorporation of the firm-specific component of future earnings news into prices alone, while analyst forecasting activity accelerates both the industry and firm-specific component of future earnings news. Our results suggest that all three parties influence the firm's information environment, but the type of price-relevant information conveyed by their activities depends on each party's relative information advantage.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiyan Jiang ◽  
Donghua Zhou ◽  
Joseph H. Zhang

SYNOPSIS Against the backdrop of the Chinese Directive 40 (China's Reg FD) issued in 2007 as an attempt to curb insider trading and to level the information playing field, this study investigates whether analysts' private information acquisition influences the extent to which firm-specific information is impounded into stock prices, i.e., stock price synchronicity, and how the restrictions on selective disclosures imposed by Directive 40 have shaped the relationship between analyst information acquisition and synchronicity. Using a pre-Directive 40 sample, we show that synchronicity is negatively related to analysts' private information acquisition, which provides support for the “information advantage” argument of analysts' information production. However, the ability of analysts' private information acquisition in improving firm-specific information incorporated into stock price is mitigated post-Directive 40 due to a restriction on selective disclosures and/or private communication. Moreover, we find that this regulatory impact varies for firms being followed by affiliated analysts versus non-affiliated analysts. JEL Classifications: G14; G15; G17; G18.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 829-853
Author(s):  
Jeong-Bon Kim ◽  
Xiaoxi Li ◽  
Yan Luo ◽  
Kemin Wang

We investigate whether foreign investors help to reduce local firms’ future stock price crash risk through their external monitoring. We find that the entrance of foreign investors is associated with a significant reduction in local firms’ future crash risk. Further investigation reveals that foreign investors help to improve local firms’ financial reporting quality from the perspectives of accrual quality, conservatism, and annual report tone management. The evidence is consistent with our conjecture that foreign investors play an important external monitoring role, which reduces managerial bad-news hoarding and thereby lowers local firms’ future crash risk. We also find that the crash risk–reducing role of foreign investors is more pronounced when foreign investors are more familiar with the institutional background of the host country, when they have stronger incentives to monitor local firms, and when local firms have higher governance efficacy. A variety of robustness checks reveals that our results are unlikely to be driven by potential endogeneity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-219
Author(s):  
Yongtae Kim

ABSTRACT Guo, Huang, Zhang, and Zhou (2015) examine whether foreign investors encourage or limit real earnings management in Japanese firms. They find that firms with higher foreign ownership engage less in real earnings management than other firms as evidenced by higher abnormal cash flows from operations, lower abnormal production costs, and higher abnormal discretionary expenses. While the results suggest that foreign ownership and real earnings management in Japanese firms are negatively correlated, it remains unclear whether foreign investors improve the corporate governance of firms and thus limit real earnings management or that they are attracted to firms that have better governance and more transparent earnings. One fruitful avenue for future research is to examine whether the negative relation between foreign ownership and financial reporting quality reflects monitoring by foreign investors or selection.


2018 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun-Koo Kang ◽  
Limin Xu

ABSTRACT We examine how the adoption of executive stock ownership guidelines affects debtholder wealth. We find that guideline adoption is associated with lower loan spreads, fewer collateral requirements, and fewer other restrictive covenants. The results are robust to using an instrumental variables approach. We further find that guideline adoption has a negative effect on bond yield spreads and that after the adoption, firms' risk-taking incentives are lower. These results suggest that guideline adoption benefits debtholders by lowering agency costs of debt. However, we also find that adoption of ownership guidelines is associated with a significant increase in stock prices, and that firms are more likely to increase financial reporting quality in the post-adoption period, indicating that guideline adoption incentivizes managers to improve firm fundamentals, benefiting both shareholders and debtholders. JEL Classifications: G21; G32; M12; M41.


Author(s):  
Andrea Rey ◽  
Giovanni Landi

This paper aims to assess whether financial reporting quality affect the access of Italian Non-SME firms to financial debt. In order to measure the financial reporting quality, we assume as proxy the accrual quality. We carried out a regression analysis, using financial statement data of firms sampled. The results reveal a positive association between financial reporting quality and the access to bank and financial institution debt. In addition, our findings also show no association between financial debt maturity and the accounting quality of firms.


2011 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 1255-1288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Chen ◽  
Ole-Kristian Hope ◽  
Qingyuan Li ◽  
Xin Wang

ABSTRACT Prior research shows that financial reporting quality (FRQ) is positively related to investment efficiency for large U.S. publicly traded companies. We examine the role of FRQ in private firms from emerging markets, a setting in which extant research suggests that FRQ would be less conducive to the mitigation of investment inefficiencies. Earlier studies show that private firms have lower FRQ, presumably because of lower market demand for public information. Prior research also shows that FRQ is lower in countries with low investor protection, bank-oriented financial systems, and stronger conformity between tax and financial reporting rules. Using firm-level data from the World Bank, our empirical evidence suggests that FRQ positively affects investment efficiency. We further find that the relation between FRQ and investment efficiency is increasing in bank financing and decreasing in incentives to minimize earnings for tax purposes. Such a connection between tax-minimization incentives and the informational role of earnings has often been asserted in the literature. We provide explicit evidence in this regard.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Auwalu Musa

This study examines the role of International Financial Reporting Standards on financial reporting quality and the global convergence. The IFRS adoption is already an issue of global relevance across countries of the world due to the quest for uniformity, reliability and comparability of financial statements of companies. The adoption of IFRS in Europe is an example of accounting quality across-borders with different institutional frameworks and enforcement rules. This allows investigating whether, and to what extent accounting regulation per se can affect the quality of financial reporting and leads to convergence in financial reporting. Specifically, the study review how the change in the recognition and measurement of firms operating accrual item, the loan loss provision, affects income smoothing behaviour and timely loss recognition. The study found that the IFRS convergence reduces the scope for earnings management, is related to more timely loss recognition and leads to more value relevant accounting measures. Thus, the study reviews background and guidance on the change in financial reporting quality following extensive IFRS adoption around the world countries. The study found that a difference in accounting quality is related to country’s overall infrastructure setting. The study also highlights the importance of investor protection for financial reporting quality and the need for regulators to design mechanisms that limit managers' earnings management practice. The study found from different literatures that the adoption of IFRS leads to higher quality of accounting numbers and improve foreign direct investment across countries.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. Bakarich

ABSTRACT Given the recent trend in foreign firms leaving the U.S., this paper analyzes 122 firms that voluntarily deregistered from the U.S. from 2004 through 2012. I find that a deregistration from the U.S. is associated with greater absolute abnormal accruals and less timely recognition of economic losses compared to both before the firm deregistered and to a matched control firm that still maintains a U.S. cross-listing. Upon further examination, I find the decrease in accounting quality is not significant for firms returning to home markets that require IFRS, but rather the significant decrease is attributable only to foreign firms returning to non-IFRS environments. Further tests show that the level of regulatory quality in the home market, relative to the U.S., is not a significant mitigating factor in the negative association between deregistration and accounting quality. These findings imply that, after controlling for country and regulatory effects, accounting standards play a significant role in explaining the relationship between deregistration from U.S. exchanges and financial reporting quality.


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