Skewness preference, the tendency to overweight the probability of extreme tail events, can affect managerial decision making. We find that Chinese listed firms managed by CEOs who experienced a largely unpredictable rare event, namely the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, during their earlier executive careers have lower stock price crash risk measured by negative skewness. This effect especially matters for CEOs whose experienced events are more salient. Furthermore, professional epidemic experience induces CEOs to deter stock price crashes through altering financial reporting strategies. Overall, entrepreneurs’ skewness preference can reduce the negative skewness of stock returns.

This paper assesses the impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) on the stock market of China. Our results indicate that the Chinese stock market reacts rapidly to the SARS epidemic. We provide strong empirical evidence that the epidemic has an immediate impact on the pharmaceutical and tourism industries. In particular, pharmaceutical companies are benefited from the outbreak of SARS, while the tourism sector is adversely affected. Our results imply the existence of a profitable trading rule during an epidemic.

透明化已经蔚为世界范围内中央银行制度变革的基本趋势之一。随着我国中央银行制度的建立健全，人民银行的目标透明度、操作透明度、知识透明度稳步提高。2001年加入WTO和2003年SARS危机积极推动我国的治道变革。目前，人民银行透明度与《货币和金融政策透明度良好行为准则：原则宣言》、《货币和金融政策透明度良好行为准则辅助文件》等国际标准还有较大差距，是今后我国中央银行法制建设的重点。

在短期SARS疫情确实对中国股票市场造成了较大冲击在中长期由于中国基本经济趋势将步入新的景气循环股票市场向上的趋势没有改变但由于SASR疫情对宏观经济增长产生了负面作用并且影响具有不确定性这将对股票市场的中长期趋势产生压制性作用由于短期冲击已为市场所消化长期影响程度不明确政府在目前可以采取宽松货币的措施而不宜采取直接针对股票市场的政策行动。