We study how bank liberalization affects analyst forecast accuracy using two interest rate deregulations in China—the removal of the cap on bank lending rates in 2004 and the removal of the floor in 2013—as quasi-natural experiments. Our results show that the analyst forecast accuracy for high-risk firms decreases significantly after the removal of the lending rate cap, whereas analyst forecast accuracy for low-risk firms increases significantly after the removal of the lending rate floor. Moreover, interest rate liberalization affects forecast accuracy through operational risk and information asymmetry channels. Furthermore, the impact was concentrated on firms whose actual performance fell short of performance expectations and those that received more bank loans. Our findings imply that interest rate liberalization policies may have unintended consequences for analyst forecasts.
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