This paper provides evidence that some seasoned equity offerings are motivated by public information. We test this channel in the supply chain setting, where supplier managers are more attentive than outside investors to customer news. We find that supplier firms are more likely to issue seasoned equity when their customer firms have negative earnings surprises. The results are mitigated when there is common scrutiny on the customer-supplier firm pairs by outside investors and analysts. Furthermore, long-run stock market performance appears to be worse for firms that issue seasoned equity following the negative earnings surprise of their customer firms.

We examine how the sudden drop in public information search capability caused by Google’s withdrawal from China affects Chinese analysts’ earnings forecasts. We observe, after Google’s withdrawal, a decline in analysts’ forecast accuracy for firms with foreign trade relative to those without it. This decline suggests that the withdrawal hinders analysts’ acquisition of foreign information about firms, which decreases the quality of their earnings forecasts. We also find that the effect of the withdrawal on forecast accuracy is stronger for firms with higher business complexity and more opaque financial reporting and for analysts with weaker information processing capacity and more attention constraints. Additionally, we find that corporate site visits serve as an alternative information source that can compensate for the information loss caused by the Google withdrawal. Last, we document that the withdrawal reduces analysts’ forecast timeliness and increases their forecast dispersion.

This study investigates the impact of analysts' information source diversity on forecast bias and investment returns. We combine the GPT-4o model and text similarity, to extract the names of information sources from the text of analyst in-depth reports. Using 349,200 sources, we calculate information diversity scores based on the variety of data sources to measure analysts’ ability of selecting relevant information. The findings reveal that higher information diversity significantly reduces forecast bias and enhances portfolio returns. The effect is particularly pronounced for large companies, state-owned enterprises, those with low analyst coverage, low firm-specific experience, and reports with positive forecast revisions. Institutional investors recognize the value of this skill, while retail investors remain largely unaware, which contributes to financial inequality. This study highlights the critical role of information diversity in analyst performance.

This study examines how classified boards affect workplace safety, an important dimension of employee welfare. Using comprehensive establishment-level injury data from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and a novel classified board database, we document that firms with classified boards experience 12-13% lower workplace injury rates. To establish causality, we employ instrumental variable and difference-in-differences approaches exploiting staggered board declassifications. The safety benefits of classified boards operate through increased safety expenditures, reduced employee workloads, and enhanced external monitoring through analyst coverage. These effects are strongest in financially constrained firms and those with weaker monitoring mechanisms. Our findings support the bonding hypothesis that anti-takeover provisions facilitate long-term value creation by protecting stakeholder relationships and provide novel evidence that classified boards benefit rank-and-file employees, not just executives and major customers. The results reveal an important mechanism through which governance structures impact employee welfare and challenge the conventional view that classified boards primarily serve managerial entrenchment.

We develop an information choice model where information costs are sticky and co-move with firm-level intrinsic uncertainty as opposed to temporal variations in uncertainty. Incorporating analysts' forecasts, we predict a negative relationship between information costs and information acquisition, as proxied by the predictability of analysts' forecast biases. Finally, the model shows a contrasting pattern between information acquisition and intrinsic and temporal uncertainty, where intrinsic uncertainty strengthens return predictability of analysts' biases through the information cost channel, while temporal uncertainty weakens it through the information benefit channel. We empirically confirm these opposing relationships that existing theories struggle to explain.

This study examines the relationship between industry litigation risk and corporate misconduct using China's A-share listed companies’ data from 2007 to 2022. The findings indicate a significant and negative association, where companies in industries with higher median litigation amounts relative to their assets exhibit reduced incidents of misconduct. This suggests that businesses in high-risk litigation sectors may adopt more cautious practices to mitigate legal challenges and protect their reputations. The robustness of these findings is confirmed through a variety of tests, including a quasi-experimental setting of the chief judges rotation implemented in 2008. Furthermore, the study finds that external monitors including financial analysts’ site visits and local law firms moderate the negative relationship between litigation risk and misconduct. We further show that legal enforcement and moral capital are the two channels through which industry litigation risk impacts corporate misconduct. Our findings underscore the role of litigation risk in shaping peer firms' behavior.

Site visits allow visitors to physically inspect productive resources and interact with onsite employees and executives face-to-face. We posit that, by allowing visitors to acquire investmentrelated information and monitor the management team, site visits offer disciplinary benefits for corporate investments. Using mandatory disclosures of site visits in China, we find that corporate investments become more responsive to growth opportunities as the intensity of site visits increases, consistent with the notion that site visits yield disciplinary benefits. We also find that the positive association between site visits and investment efficiency is more pronounced when visitors can glean more investment-related information and when they have stronger incentives and greater power to monitor managers. This positive association is also stronger among firms with more severe agency problems and higher asset tangibility. The overall evidence supports the notion that site visits serve as a unique venue for institutional investors and financial analysts to acquire valuable information and serve a monitoring function, which generates disciplinary benefits for corporate investments.

This study explores the proclivity of institutional investors in China towards highESG stocks amidst the growth of ESG investment funds. Using A-share data from 2015-2022 and a Tobit model analysis, it is found that these investors indeed favor such stocks, particularly under extensive analyst coverage and in non-state-owned firms. However, rating discrepancies can impact this preference. The attraction lies in reduced operational risks and improved net profits. Notably, independent investors show a stronger ESG preference, especially within high-pollution industries. Thus, fostering ESG investment among institutional investors can improve resource allocation in China's capital market, favoring eco-friendly companies.

We show that the personal traits of analysts, as revealed by their political donations, influence their forecasting behavior and stock prices. Analysts who contribute primarily to the Republican Party adopt a more conservative fore- casting style. Their earnings forecast revisions are less likely to deviate from the forecasts of other analysts and are less likely to be bold. Their stock recommen- dations also contain more modest upgrades and downgrades. Overall, these analysts produce better quality research, which is recognized and rewarded by their employers, institutional investors, and the media. Stock market participants, how- ever, do not fully recognize their superior ability as the market reaction following revisions by these analysts is weaker.

This paper investigates the outcomes of ambiguous online interaction between firms and investors. Using question-answer text data from two online investor interactive platforms (IIPs) in China, we show that firms that give less relevant answers to investors’ questions tend to have larger analyst forecast bias and higher analyst optimism. Though the targeted users of the interactive platforms are individual investors, the interaction quality influences analysts’ forecasts. Meanwhile, the effect of question dodging is stronger when questions are related with earnings and disclosure, when firms have higher earnings uncertainty and lower media coverage, but weaker when analysts visit the firm or rely less on public information. Further analysis shows that irrelevant answers increase the market demand for analyst forecasts, deteriorate firms’ information environment, and lead to larger forecast dispersion, lower stock liquidity, and weaker earnings responses of the market. Moreover, we find that other market participants related with analysts are also aware of firms’ question dodging by reducing holdings and site visits. Our findings provide evidence that question dodging in firm-investor interaction exacerbates information asymmetry and unintendedly influences analysts’ forecast behaviors.